


Nothing Fades Like the Light

by buckybleeds



Series: Black Crown [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drowning, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, For a while at least, Gore, HYDRA Trash Party, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Steve Rogers, M/M, Multi, My Good Dudes There Is So Much Torture And Rape, Non-Consensual Blow Jobs, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Okay that's not the whole fic because plot happened, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Psychological Torture, Rape/Non-con Elements, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve Rogers whump, That's the whole fic just torture and rape, Torture, Wetting, Whump, alexander pierce is a giant shitbag, beyond canon typical levels of gore, but i'm not going to melt someone's face over it, inappropriate use of fountain pens, oh hey look at that more torture, tell me if i missed a tag, the comfort will get there, the desire to firebomb buckingham palace is understandable
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:42:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22790416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckybleeds/pseuds/buckybleeds
Summary: The "what if HYDRA programmed Steve right out of the ice" fic that nobody asked for.Feb 18 2020 - WIP, updates when I finish a chapter, no set schedule, summary to be edited when fic is complete.
Relationships: Alexander Pierce/Steve Rogers, Brock Rumlow/Jack Rollins, Brock Rumlow/Jack Rollins/Cynthia Mercer, Cynthia Mercer/Steve Rogers, Hydra Agents/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers/Brock Rumlow
Series: Black Crown [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1745569
Comments: 92
Kudos: 157





	1. Drown in the Warmth of Home

**Author's Note:**

> All of the warnings, last chance to turn back.
> 
> Title and chapter titles from Orville Peck's "Nothing Fades Like the Light" because it gives me big Steve Feels
> 
> Innumerable and Effusive thanks to Deus3xMachina for beta reading my pile of garbage; any and all mistakes, misspellings, and missteps are my own.

He felt a wash of warmth move over him, like orange daisies and the smell of bread and the smoky taste of whiskey in someone else's mouth. 

He hated the cold.

He'd hated it when he was scrawny and probably dying slow and the sleet meant breathing would hurt and taste like pennies for a week. 

He'd hated it when he was big and broad and watched part of Abrahmson's foot turn black and die over the course of a week because a hole in your boot in December in the Alps could cripple a man just the same as a mine or a bear trap.

Steve hated the cold, he remembered that, when he was dying. 

He thought the cabin of the plane would flood, that the glass would shatter, steel would crumple, and he'd drown quick.

He got the angle wrong.

He woke up. 

His legs were numb and his chest felt like it'd been run over by a Panzer. There was freezing water up to his hips but he was awake and breathing stuffy air in complete darkness. 

Well. 

Maybe he wasn't alive. 

Maybe he was in hell. 

His head hurt. His head hurt and his chest hurt and he couldn't feel his toes but he could shift his thighs and hear water sloshing.

He sat. Was sitting. Was crushed into the pilot's chair of a Nazi bomber plane somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. He sat and contemplated his situation. 

When he'd first returned to awareness the water was at his hips and now it was lapping at his navel. 

The water was rising. 

He slowly counted to three hundred. 

The water was caressing the lowest point of his sternum. 

He moved. 

The armrest of the pilot's chair had become entangled with the yoke, pinning him in place. 

He could wait. He could let the water flow up over him, fill his mouth and lungs. He could let it suffocate him, let it drown him, give up like he'd never given in to the cold winter sickness, surrender to the ocean as pneumonia. 

But he'd never been that kind of guy. 

He had lost the feeling in his fingers by the time he wrapped his hands around the yoke and tore it out of the floor. He dropped it and it sank away from him and he pulled himself out of the chair and his head hurt so much and it was so cold here in the dark. 

He pounded around inside the cabin, grabbing blindly at the walls and hauling himself hand-over-hand with frozen fingers until there was nowhere else for him to go. 

He'd found his last breaths and all he could do was wait until they were gone. 

Well. 

Wait and shiver. 

And pray. 

He started with the Act of Contrition, words coming halting to stiff lips. He wasn't drowning, the water was below his knees, the earth was below the sun, he was below the waves, he was so cold. 

The Apostles' Creed.

Peggy had sounded so proud and frightened for him -

God - 

Bucky reached out as he fell, he reached a hand up to heaven but Steve was a sinner and weak and couldn't save him and -

Father Almighty -

Cold and trapped like a butterfly pinned to a card, like his heart strapped to a table, like a skinny boy in a metal tube starting to scream -

Creator -

I am heartily sorry and so fucking cold -

He was gone before Christ descended into hell and still the water rose. 

***

The man in the ice was beautiful. 

He would have also been beautiful outside of the ice, with his golden hair and godlike body, but the ice added something special, made him magical and crystalline and cyanotic.

Rumlow was glad he'd splurged on his newest StarkPhone upgrade and gotten the model with the ultra-high-def camera. He took a lot of photos. 

Rumlow was here to play babysitter for the Wake & Bake process because he was one of the Asset's most experienced handlers and had played this game before. 

But, while the Asset sometimes came out of the freezer with a dusting of frosty crystals sparkling in its eyelashes, the Asset had never had a sarcophagus of clear, glittering ice like this. 

Rumlow let his eyes roam over what was left of Rogers. He let his mind wander. 

He wondered how the ice would melt, if it would drip away from the delicate face and thick chest first, maybe, leaving the head and torso free while his limbs were still entombed. Rumlow thought about how easy it would be to cut away his ridiculous combat suit like that. 

Hell, he thought about how he could take a chisel and chip out what he wanted. The blood was frozen so it wouldn't leak. Rumlow could just put a wedge between that pretty body and its extraneous parts and wiggle the prize loose like he was digging a sapphire out of granite and hide his little boy blue in a backpack and smuggle him home to defrost in the bathtub so he'd wake up all alone and helpless and already dripping Brock's jizz out of what had been a tight pink hole but was now a wet red mess. 

Fuck. 

His prick was hard and it was going to be literal days before the Polar Ice Cap even had enough of a heartbeat to start on programming. 

He put a hand to his crotch and squeezed, happy to know he was seated out of the fish-eyed view of all the cameras he'd placed. 

Captain Dead, White, and Blue would wake up soon enough. 

***

The warmth was soft hands and full of whispers and he gave into its strange dreams because it hurt hotly.

Both burned. The cold burned and pricked at his nerves and lanced him through with sensation like sandpaper, scraping him raw. And the daisy-whiskey-bread warmth boiled him slowly until he was as soft and limp as a piece of overdone pasta, it filled his lungs and left through his mouth and he was breathing and wept to know it and the tears burned too. 

Things continued to happen in and around him until the whispers coalesced into words. 

"Be good and we'll make the hurting stop"

"Apollo"

"Fuck, the mouth on him"

"Violets"

"Oh, oh _sweetheart_ "

"Lightning"

"Zap him again"

"Eighteen"

"Breathe through it, goddamnit, you can take it, just look at you"

"Solace"

"Wider, hotshot"

"Four"

"Just be good, you know how to be good"

"Sunset"

"Christ, how did you fit that in him"

"Charity"

"He's dripping"

"Thirteen"

"Swallow it, honey, like a good boy"

"Shield"

***

Rogers was filthy and had mostly stopped bleeding when Brock gave him the fifth round of shots. 

He struggled on his way into the shower, dragging his feet, but the judicious application of a stun baton got him into the stall and the short vibranium chain between his wrists locked to a well-reinforced eyebolt next to the drain. 

Overhead a speaker repeated the grim little poem of Rogers' words. 

Brock closed the bulletproof glass door and hit the switch, activating the three sprayers pointed at the huge, kneeling form.

Rogers wailed. 

"Please, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'll be good, please - "

Brock had seen the cistern that fed this particular shower. When he'd checked on it this morning there had been a chunk of ice the size of a fucking bus floating on top. 

He watched the sobs taper off, waited until the Rogers' lips were periwinkle and his mouth hung slack, and shut off the water. 

Brock stripped off his shirt and wrapped himself around the Captain. He tried to burrow into Brock's chest, shaking with cold or fear or the drugs. 

Brock gave it five minutes then stood and opened his pants. 

Rogers didn't even blink. 

His skin may have been cold but his mouth sure was hot.

***

"Two weeks isn't ideal but Coulson's starting to get pushy. We've got to give them the Captain or give them a body."

" _His_ body or _a_ body?"

"Enough DNA samples survived that they'd figure out a fake pretty fast."

"He'd be a good tool. I don't want to lose him."

"True, but we don't want him to be used against us either."

"Hmm. Let's see where he's at with the programming. We can't wipe him if we're going to let him wake up, but if the programming induces like it's supposed to we can keep working him into shape even if Coulson spends most of his time playing house with him."

***

Steve woke up in a hospital bed, sheets scratchy with starch. He heard breathing beside him, heard a song playing somewhere nearby. He kept his eyes closed. 

"I know you're awake, son. Quit fooling around and report."

That sounded like some variety or other of officer. He was supposed to answer to officers. 

He opened his eyes and took in a beige room with a yellow lamp and a kindly- looking older man with horn-rimmed glasses and a sharp suit. 

Steve swallowed and squinted. 

"Sir?"

His head hurt. 

The older man smiled gently. 

"I know it's been a hard time, son. What's the last thing you remember?"

"There was a - " God, oh God his head hurt.

"Rogers," the old man said, "Rogers are you with me?"

"There was a plane. I - last thing I remember I was in a plane."

"Good," the old man said. He poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the bedside table and handed it to Steve. "Drink up."

Steve did, and his head cleared a little. 

"You feeling better?"

Steve nodded gingerly. 

"Good. Now, I'm going to say a few words to you. It's going to sound like gibberish but when I'm done I'll have some questions about those words. Understand?"

Steve didn't, but he nodded anyway. He'd figure it out when the room stopped spinning. 

"Okay, here we go: Apollo, violets, lightning -"

***

Rumlow took his finger off the button and the hoist jerked to a stop. He held out the picture again, an old man in glasses. The Secretary.

"How long have you known this man?"

Rogers was panting and crying. He shook his head. 

"How long have you known this man?" 

"I don't know him," Rogers sobbed, "I've never seen him before."

Rumlow pushed the button and the Captain was being dragged back underwater, the heavy weight chained to his ankles pulling his body in a plumb line down from where he hung from the hoist by a chain on his wrists. 

Icy water rose over his legs and his waist and he thrashed as he sank deeper. 

"I don't know him, I don't know him," he wailed, yanking at his restraints so energetically that he tore the skin of his wrist open and bright blood broke from the wound, running in a beautiful ribbon down his pale arm and diffusing in the water when it reached his chest.

"Please, I don't - " and then there was water in his mouth and over his head and finally just his purpling fingertips poked through the surface while Rogers strained and twisted in the tank. Rumlow let him sit in it for a full minute then hauled him out. 

He spoke as soon as his head cleared the water. 

"Please, please, I'll be good, I don't know him," he was keening and cringing and gritting his teeth, "please, I'm sorry, let me be good for you, I don't know him, please - "

Christ, but he was beautiful when he was begging. Brock thumbed the button that released the weight on his legs and Rogers hung his head and let his body shake as his sobs turned from terror to relief. 

Brock moved him over the platform beside the tank and released his wrists as well. Rogers let himself collapse in a heap. 

Brock leaned against the railing surrounding the tank and dropped trou.

"C'mere, honey, you can't be good for me all the way over there."

*** 

Steve woke up in a hospital bed, sheets scratchy with starch. He heard breathing beside him, heard a newsreader on the radio somewhere nearby. He kept his eyes closed. 

Somebody shifted in a chair by his side. He heard cloth and paper rustle followed by the snap of a match and the rich smell of smoke. 

"I don't suppose you've got one of those to spare," Steve croaked, eyes still firmly shut. It sounded like his throat had been sandpapered recently. 

A deep voice chuckled. 

"Depends, hoss, I don't suppose you've got a dime."

Steve cracked an eye open.

"That's extortionate, positively un-American of you; I can't believe the gall and besides, I'm flat broke." 

He was smirking, though, and studying the smoking fella.

He wasn't young and wasn't old. Had on a dress uniform but wore it sloppy. His hair was a bit too long to be regulation and his chin was blue with stubble, like maybe he'd been in the field for three months, got stuffed into a monkey suit this morning, and planned on walking out of Steve's hospital room and into the field for another three months. 

"Well," the fella said, "I ain't gonna give you one, but I'll play you for it." He pulled out a battered pack of Bicycles and passed it to Steve, who took it with a fair amount of grace and started shuffling. 

"Deuces wild," Steve asked, passing the deck back to the other man to deal.

"Go fish," he said with a grin, and started slapping down cards. 

They played five or six hands in the next couple hours, Steve did win himself a cigarette or three but as soon as they'd started playing the other fella started sharing. 

His name was Rumlow, he was with some unit that was too hush-hush to talk about. Steve could relate. 

Rumlow put down his cards suddenly, and stared pointedly at Steve until he stubbed out his cigarette. 

Steve looked at him warily and he spoke.

"Apollo - "

***

Rogers was strapped into a chair, his legs spread wide. Rollins was between those legs, taping one wire to Rogers' just-shaved sack and holding another wire in his hand, the last few inches carefully stripped of insulation. 

There was a car battery between their feet hooked up to the other ends of the wires.

Rogers was already crying and Rollins hadn't even zapped him yet. 

Fuck, but Rumlow was hard. He stood in the next room, watching, and wished he could trade places with Jack. Maybe after. 

Rollins tapped at a remote and a picture of Rumlow was projected against the wall.

"Who is this man?"

Rogers looked at the photo like it was some kind of trick. 

"That's my handler."

"Good. What's his name?"

Rogers cringed in anticipation. 

"I don't know. Please," he was looking at the ground. Meek. Scared. Submitting. Brock palmed himself through his tac pants. 

"That's fine. Have you fraternized with this man?"

Rogers blushed. Interesting to see that he still could. 

"Yes," he whispered. 

"How have you fraternized with this man," Rollins continued. 

Rogers whimpered. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish. He kept crying. 

"He tells me to be good for him and I do. I am. I am good for him."

Rollins nodded. 

"Be more specific please."

Jack was the best friend any guy could ever ask for. 

Rogers blush had gone curdled and purple.

"He fucks me. I use my mouth for him. I'm good for him just like I am for all the rest of you fucking assholes."

Brock groaned. He's going to enjoy making Rogers pay for that. 

Jack was unaffected. 

"Have you ever played a game with this man?"

Rogers is confused. 

"N-no?"

"Have you ever played cards with this man?"

"No."

"Has this man ever given you a gift or a treat, like candy or cigarettes?"

Rogers blushed again, warm and pink.

"He gave me candy once."

"Did he tell you why?"

Rogers looked like he wanted to throw up. 

"He said sweet mouths get sweet things and dirty mouths get dirty things. Said I was sweet for him. Said I'd been good."

"He has given you candy, has this man ever given you a cigarette?"

Rogers shook his head. 

"Answer the question verbally, please."

"He's never given me cigarettes."

Rollins stood and gently set the shielded length of the wire on top of Rogers' thigh. He froze, looking too scared to breathe. 

"That will be all, thank you," Rollins said, and crossed to enter Brock's observation room. 

He was sweaty and smelled masculine and excited in the cramped room. 

"All yours slugger," he said, and settled in to watch. 

Rogers flinched when Brock entered the interrogation room, his eyes flicking between the exit door and the loose wire on his leg. 

Brock smiled and took Jack's seat, delicately picking up the bare wire.

"You weren't good for Agent Rollins, were you sweetheart."

He shuddered and shook his head, keeping his eyes on the ground. 

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he moaned miserably. 

"It's too late for sorry, honey, you gotta make it up to me now."

Rogers was nodding frantically, biting his lip to try to keep from whining out his fear. 

"Hey, hey, honey," Brock let his voice go soft and gentle, "it's okay, sweetheart, be good for me, huh? Gimme a kiss."

Rogers closed his eyes and tipped his head back. His teeth released his lip and it hung, fat and pink and tempting, below his slack mouth. 

Rumlow bent down to meet him, pressing his own lips over Rogers' and slipping his tongue between his perfect white teeth until he was tasting him as deep as he could go. 

He kissed Rogers until the younger man stopped remembering the need to be defensive and let his shoulders relax and his sobs flow freely, filling his mouth with the taste of salt. 

Brock pulled away from his mouth and laid a soft kiss on his forehead. 

Rogers made a noise like a squashed kitten at that and started rocking in his restraints and clenching his eyes shut when Brock sat down in front of him. 

Brock stroked his thumb gently over Rogers' high, smooth cheekbone. 

"Honey, what's my name?"

"I don't know," he moaned.

"Wrong answer," Brock said, and brought the bare wire down for a quick stoke over his balls. 

Rogers shrieked and seized and the battery made a nasty snapping sound. 

Brock didn't ask any more questions, he just tickled Rogers' nuts with a car battery and watched his abs ripple in pain until his ballsack was littered with blistering burns and he had puked all over himself. 

*** 

Steve woke up in a hospital bed, sheets scratchy with starch. He heard breathing beside him, heard a pretty piece of classical music playing from somewhere nearby. He kept his eyes closed. 

***

"Please, please, I don't know, I didn't talk to him, please stop I'm sorry I'm sorry please God I can't I can't I'm _sorry_ \- "

***

Steve woke up in a hospital bed, sheets scratchy with starch. He heard breathing beside him, heard the theme song from a serial radio drama played from somewhere nearby. He kept his eyes closed. 

Actually, he wasn't sure he could open them. Wasn't sure he was awake. 

He heard the body near him shift, smelled an unfamiliar masculine cologne as a cool hand was laid over his sticky, sweaty forehead. 

The touch felt - it felt incredible. Like cold water and a hot drink and a good meal radiating out from just above his closed eyes, feeding him and filling him. 

He moaned into the contact and felt his jaw go slack as muscles from head to toe relaxed into the euphoria of touch. 

"Pretty," someone said, and Steve felt warmth rush to the surface of his skin. He knew what he looked like. He'd always known, always heard it shouted at him down alleys and by the docks. 

_Hey queer, hey Nancy, hey punk, what's a pretty little cocksucker like you doin' in a place like this._

He knew he was pretty. He hated it. 

But still, the hand on his head felt good. 

The weight of another hand landed on his chest. That felt good too, and the warmth of his blush prickled into a different kind of heat. 

***

Rogers didn't quite wake. He drifted, he frowned, he gasped, but he didn't quite wake up. 

Alex drank in the sight of him, intoxicated by the memory of when he had been this fresh and young and lovely. This ripe.

He had never been built on the same intimidating lines as the Captain, but he'd had the same full pink mouth and straw blonde hair and eyes like a clean, clear bay full of sunshine and promise. 

Had anybody looked at him the way he was looking at Rogers now? Had anyone run their glance over his lithe, golden body and boiled with rage that they couldn't have him, keep him, chain him to a bed and use him until he starved to death, too perfect and beautiful to merit something as prosaic as feeding? 

Rogers should have died in the water. He would be wasted in the world and his exceptional loveliness would become commonplace. People would put his face on magazines and book covers and inspirational murals and pass it a hundred times a day and forget that it was rare and special.

Pierce wanted that as his own. He wanted to lock Rogers' beauty away the way he'd locked the Soldier's face away - something precious, more precious than rubies. Better to hide them behind ugliness than to cast pearls before swine. 

Alex wondered if Rogers could grow another nose, if he cut it off. 

If he bit off that pink lip or pared away his eyelids would they grow back? 

He'd been frozen for decades, it would be reasonable to assume he'd lost some extremities; his nose, his cock, a few toes. He'd died. Nobody could reasonably expect him to be in one piece. Phil would understand if they handed over the Captain a little worse for wear.

He was sitting on top of Rogers without deciding to move there. He was tapping the blade of his pocket knife against Rogers' mouth and he couldn't remember removing the knife from his pocket.

Rogers clearly liked the weight and warmth of him. His hips canted up and his brow furrowed as he whimpered into the sensation of being sat upon. 

Pierce slit his right nostril open nearly to the bridge of his nose. 

A shocking amount of blood ran down Rogers' face while a similar surge trickled through Pierce's body, the speed and strength of his arousal taking him by surprise.

The cut he'd made was already closing seamlessly, leaving no mark to show that Alexander Pierce had done this to Steve Rogers.

Unacceptable. 

Pierce shifted further down Rogers' form until he was straddling his thighs and taking in the vulgar appearance of the unconscious man's erection. 

It was flushed and hot and huge. Cartoonish and arcing toward his belly. 

Pierce stroked the offensive appendage with the back of his knife and sucked at his teeth. 

He put away his knife and retrieved the graceful Montblanc fountain pen from the inside pocket of his suit coat.

He held the pen from the base of the barrel and violently flicked his wrist a few times before carefully holding the pen away from his suit and removing the cap. 

The nib was messy with deep blue ink. It was also very sharp. 

Pierce set the cap between Rogers' pecs and used his free hand to trace the veins on the underside of Rogers' cock. 

He found a clear area halfway down the shaft and gently placed the nib against the skin before slowly, forcibly pushing it through the surface and trapping the ink inside of him. The Captain whined. Alex pulled the pen free, noting the nib was now messy with blood, recapped it, and replaced it in his pocket. 

Alex also noticed that the front of his pants was wet with something that wasn't blood or ink. 

He stood and removed his jacket, vest, and slacks, but couldn't bear to see his time-ravaged body against the perfection laid out before him; he left his shirt on as he rummaged in the bedside table and came out with a tube of lubricant and a condom. 

***

Steve couldn't tell if he was awake and being tortured or asleep and having a terrible dream. 

He hurt, he hurt in so many places, but his body throbbed with want. 

There were things inside of him and on top of him and he wanted to shove them all away and beg for the simplicity that had started this. 

His body screamed for many good reasons, but the tears that ran out of his closed eyes were all for the want of a kind hand on his forehead to sooth away the rest. 

***

If he was perfunctory in his preparation nobody could blame him for his eagerness. 

Rogers' ass was heaven on earth. 

He was hot and tight and toned, grabbing back at the intrusion and cooing mindlessly at the sensation. 

"Is that what you're good for, prettyboy," Pierce snarled as he struggled to control the heavy limbs so he could thrust deeper inside to punish Rogers for his youth and beauty and survival. 

***

"I think it'll work, sir."

Pierce had invited Rumlow to the tasteful, extremely expensively appointed office that he kept at the top of the Triskelion. It was probably supposed to be a reminder that Pierce's world was miles above the sordid project that Rumlow had in the basement. 

If so Rumlow wasn't sure it was working - it mainly served as a warning to avoid getting promoted away from the kind of work he enjoyed.

Pierce hummed thoughtfully. 

"We'll need to do maintenance, there's the question of keeping the drugs in his system, and I'd like to try to trigger him at least once a month or so to make sure the programming doesn't decay."

Pierce picked up a pricy-looking pen and worried it across the blotter.

"When he's ours I want you to start working him and the Asset together. Ops, sparring, extracurriculars. They're a matched set, I want them together."

Rumlow smiled. 

Yeah, he wasn't going to be promoted away from his passion anytime soon.

"Sedate him and put him in light cryo for transport. Let SHIELD think they were the ones who brought him back."

***

"Apollo"

They used the cold like a wheel, and he'd been broken upon it. 

"Violets"

Sometimes want spiraled out of his skin like a whirlpool and he didn't know why, only how to ride it out as painlessly as possible. 

"Lightning"

They molded him with water and fire until he was a single hardened scream of terror begging not to be let out. 

"Eighteen"

Oh God, why were they always touching him? 

"Solace"

He couldn't live another day, he probably wouldn't live forever. This had to end somewhere. 

"Four"

He had been very small once, he wished to be very small again, he wanted to hide from himself inside of himself, become a dirty little beast living inside his own bloody ribcage so he wouldn't be so big and pretty and easy to find and hurt. 

"Sunset"

The plane had been an act of despair, a sin, _the_ unforgivable sin. He had bought hell fair and square. 

"Charity"

But it was a shitty kind of God who could let people choose hell. He wouldn't have chosen this, he didn't know. 

"Thirteen"

For want of his heart, the world had been lost.

"Shield"

O God, I am heartily sorry. 

***

Steve woke up in a hospital bed, sheets scratchy with starch. He heard footsteps in the hallway, heard a ballgame on the radio somewhere nearby. He kept his eyes closed.


	2. I know why I stay the same

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the truly excellent @deus3xmachina for a truly excellent beta <3
> 
> Check end notes for supplementary materials and historical information and for Special Relevant Character Information

On March 3rd Steve and Bucky got onto a train.

On March 4th Steve and no one else got onto Schmidt's plane.

On April 24th Steve woke up in a fake room in a New York he hoped was only a fever dream.

On April 25th Nick Fury handed Steve a one-page outline of the history of the United States between March 5th 1945 and April 25th 2011. Steve got as far as Vietnam before he shut down, which he considers pretty impressive given that he'd had to ask Fury what a Nuclear Weapon was. Fury then escorted him into a doctor's office, where Steve answered questions until a slim blonde drove him to a building full of glowing blue lights and handed him a set of keys to an apartment.

On April 26th Nick Fury and two US Army Generals sat at a table with Steve and argued about who currently had the right to say where Steve could sleep or sit or shit. At some point a knockout lawyer in the nicest suit Steve had ever seen came in and shouted the generals into the ground, handed Steve her card and told him to give her a call if these assholes kept dicking him around. Steve decided that he liked the lawyer and asked the blonde who'd been babysitting him how people made phone calls with the little black rectangles everyone carried. The girl, who told him to call her Cynthia, took him into a violently pink store and helped him pick out a rectangle of his own.

On April 27th Cynthia showed up at his doorstep at seven in the morning and took him to a sleek track an hour away from Manhattan. She told him he'd need ID in the next few days so they might as well see if he could drive and get him a license for that. It turned out that Steve couldn't really drive; stealing trucks in a warzone wasn't a proper driving course. But stealing motorcycles and darting around on them behind enemy lines wasn't too different from actually navigating city traffic on a bike and Steve had driven scooters once in a while even before he got all scienced up, so Cynthia drove him back to SHIELD and when they arrived the lady at the security desk had a New York Motorcycle License with Steve's photo and birthdate and signature waiting for him. Nick Fury had apparently won the argument with the generals about where he was currently being allowed to exist so Cynthia stopped by Fury's desk and picked up some papers and towed Steve back outside and into a bank, where she stonily stared down three bankers with progressively more gray and expensive haircuts until she and Steve exited the building with another card that had Steve's name on it.

Steve carefully tucked his motorcycle license and his bank card into the pocket of his shirt and Cynthia asked why he didn't put it in his wallet. Steve had to tell her he didn't have a wallet. Or any other shirts. Or pants.

Cynthia pulled out her phone and yelled very forcefully into it and took Steve to a department store. She handed him clothes and herded him into a fitting room and very politely ignored the half-hour he spent alone and shaking in the little cubicle.

She frowned at him when he came out and pulled something like a candy bar out of her purse. She shoved it at him and told him he wasn't eating enough.

On April 28th Cynthia had a case of the not-candy-bars dropped off at his apartment, explaining that the doctors had looked into his metabolism and promptly hit the deck trying to keep his body from eating itself. These would help. Then she asked him if he wanted a motorcycle. He'd laughed at her and she'd explained that Miss Walters had fought the generals even more effectively than Fury, and that all of Steve's back pay had been deposited in his bank account. He was rich and the banker with the grayest, nicest haircut from the day before was hoping to schedule a meeting with him, but Cynthia figured he deserved to go buy something shiny first.

On April 29th Steve rode around the city on his own until he ran out of gas and had to call Cynthia because he didn't know where any service stations were and was, he was horrified to discover, too scared to ask someone he didn't know. Cynthia talked him through installing a GPS app on his phone and identified his location. He'd managed to stop crying by the time she drove out to meet him with a full gas can and taught him how to use Google Maps.

Steve apologized and thanked her and followed her to a gas station and she watched over his shoulder as he haltingly navigated his way through a transaction with his card at the pump. She hugged him when it was over and drove away and Steve used his thumbs to slowly type the words "practice boxing ring" into Google Maps and found a gym close to his apartment. He rode there and talked to the owner and said he'd pose for pictures and write a review and the old guy gave him a key and showed him where the dumpster-ready bags were hidden.

Steve broke his right hand twice before he headed home for the night.

But at least he did it on his own.

On April 30th Steve got hijacked by an organized coalition of doctors as soon as Cynthia walked him through the door of the SHIELD building. He'd fended them off by lunchtime by claiming he had to do physical qualifications. Cynthia took pity on him and he ended up on a shooting range for several hours and in a large concrete room throwing the shield for several more hours.

On May 1st Steve initiated an office-wide panic by inquiring about participating in a Worker's March and ended up having to spend the day in a dark room with a projector being lectured about something called McCarthyism and finally getting some details about Cold War beyond the sad little sheet of history Fury had given him until he was finally released well after any marches might be occurring.

On May 2nd Cynthia dropped him off at her desk with a 10th grade American History book and went into a meeting all day. Steve managed to buy lunch in the cafeteria but did not manage to find a higher level of American History to study.

He stopped reading when he got to the section that talked about the bombs. The American bombs. The bombs that did to Japan what he'd died trying to prevent in New York.

He tried again and stopped reading when he got to a section that talked about My Lai.

He tried again and stopped reading when he got to a section about race riots.

He tried again and stopped reading when he got to a section about the Patriot Act.

He tried again and stopped reading when he couldn't get past the section entitled "Islamophobia after 9/11."

He stopped trying.

He went to the gym, and finally he saw Nick Fury again.

***

May 6th

It's not like you could say that Steve exactly had his life together before a Norse god tried to take over the world and alien whales started diving into NYC airspace, but if he _had_ had his life together that would have made it fall apart. As it was what happened wasn't so much "falling apart" as it was "imploding and catching on fire."

He had a team, for a few days. Had a team again. Helped to save the world again.

And then everyone else left.

And Steve realized that he didn't know where to go.

Sure, Fury had been the one to invite Steve into SHIELD, told him there was soldier's work to do.

Natasha and Barton were the only other agents Steve had met and they'd wandered off. After finding the Tesseract guns on the helicarrier he didn't trust Fury.

So, sad as it was, Steve got on his bike after fighting off aliens and just rode around the city because he didn't know where else to go. He didn't know if he was working for SHIELD, he didn't know if that meant he had to move out of the bare little apartment. He didn't know if it meant that his weird money card or his inexplicable phone would stop working.

It got dark.

This was embarrassing. He was a grown adult man. He was a war veteran. He was Captain Fucking America.

He sat in front of the SHIELD office and waited for security to open the building for the day. He didn't have a badge to get in without them because he'd always walked in with a minder to hold his hand.

And he needed a minder. He was useless.

Unless it was at the now-crushed diner at the base of Stark Tower, Steve didn't actually know where to get a plain cup of coffee. He could make one in the break room at SHIELD but he had trouble telling if the businesses he walked by on a day-to-day basis were selling shoes or baked goods without walking in and making an ass of himself. 

He thought he'd been ashamed of the fondue incident - every day in the future felt like that moment, full of wrongfooted shame and showing off that he was just a poor mick dressed up for show. He used the wrong words all the time, he was shocked and upset by things that everyone else ignored ten times a day. The only things that made sense were breaking bags in the gym and watching pigeons fight over an abandoned hotdog.

He didn't know when he'd become so helpless. _Why_ he'd become so helpless.

He survived scarlet fever, he survived the Great Depression, he survived picking bruised greens and bad meat out of the garbage so he wouldn't starve; he was a fucking adult. He could do this.

He could do this.

He just didn't understand why it felt like he couldn't.

It got light again.

Security unlocked the door and the lady with the big gold earrings and the kind smile waved him through even though he didn't have a card on a string to show her. He wanted to fall to his knees in gratitude, he wanted to disappear into the ground.

Other than Fury the only person in SHIELD he'd talked to for more than twenty minutes was Cynthia. Maybe she'd get him pointed in the right direction.

***

Rumlow wiped sweat off his brow as he jogged across the mat to answer his buzzing phone.

"Mercer, whatcha got for me?"

"I've got a big blonde puppy who doesn't know where his people went, Commander," he could hear the smile in her voice and he hoped like hell she'd waited until Rogers was out of the building to coo over him.

"Keep him occupied, go over paperwork or some shit. I'll be there tomorrow. You can tell him we've been waiting on him."

"Understood."

"Attagirl, see you soon, Cyn."

He dropped the phone into his bag and turned back to Rollins.

"Okay, one more round," he said, and lashed out with a right hook before Rollins could get a word out.

It felt like he was full of cotton candy and fire. He felt a thousand feet tall.

Brock loved his job.

***

Cynthia had the patience of a saint. Steve was going to have to get her a bouquet, if he could figure out where the hell anybody sold flowers these days.

"Okay, so now you've got email set up on your phone - you can sign up for other apps or websites and you'll get the confirmation right here. And now if you want to apply for other apartments you'll be able to respond to any questions right away."

"Unless they ask me for a year's worth of paystubs, huh," Steve cracked a wry grin at her. Future people needed to relax. Future people wanted to know way, way, way too much about you before they did so much as sell you a sandwich. Steve hadn't had a birth certificate before he'd been dead for seventy years - how he was supposed to get his hands on one to apply for a passport was a mystery. Hell, how Fury had managed to get Steve a bank account and a driver's license was a mystery.

"You're catching on, it'll be okay. Just explain that you lost everything in a fire and they'll cut you a break."

Steve stood up from his cramped position at the desk and stretched.

"Flood," he said with a smile, "I lost everything in a flood. You wanna get some lunch? I could probably use some practice with this whole bank account thing, seeing as I never had two nickles to take to the bank at the same time before."

"Sure," Cynthia stretched too. She was small and pretty and maybe a little terrifying. "You wanna try something new or you wanna have something familiar?"

She was also maybe an angel from heaven.

"How much have hamburgers changed in seventy years?"

"Too much and not at all. Let's go get you something old fashioned, old man."

***

Since Cynthia told Steve that he was rich he figured it was fair turnabout to buy her lunch. 

Also because she was the only person he didn't feel like he was imposing himself on. He'd been imposed on her. There was a difference.

"So what do you do at SHIELD when they don't have you on babysitting duty? Acclimating relics doesn't seem like a full-time position."

He'd burned through three burgers and a chocolate shake, and had been delighted to find he'd preferred the chipotle and avocado special to the classic American cheeseburger. Look at him, he was adapting.

"You're lucky you caught me on desk duty, actually," Cynthia had ordered a Swiss and mushroom monstrosity that she'd cheerfully destroyed and that looked so good that Steve had gotten one too. "I'm comms and support for STRIKE team Alpha. If they'd found you a month later I'd've been back in D.C. and you would have missed your opportunity to treat me to lunch."

Steve gave her a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. 

"Field work does seem a little more your speed than the typing pool," her face tightened in that way that let him know he'd just said something old. Old and insensitive probably. "So what does STRIKE team Alpha do?"

She cocked her head at him and raised an eyebrow. 

"We do a lot of the same stuff the Avengers would do, only we file paperwork on it. A typing pool might be handy, now that I think about it."

Steve ducked his head.

"I'm sorry. I didn't - I didn't mean anything by it."

She put her hand on top of his and smiled sweetly at him. 

"It's okay. You didn't know," she squeezed his hand and he kind of wished he was tiny and dead. "Most people are hired as specialists for their specific job. Almost everybody can type and can do it fast, and everyone carries a phone that can be a video camera or a tape recorder at the touch of a button. If you see a woman in an office she probably has a college degree and is almost certainly not a general use secretary."

Steve nodded and kept his eyes on the tabletop.

"So what's your degree in?" He was hardly loud enough to be heard. 

"Organic chemistry," she replied, releasing his hand and leaning back in her seat. "But before that I was Seaman Mercer, did four years on the bridge radio of the USS George Bush."

A smile bloomed over his face as he processed that.

"Things are a lot different now."

She grinned back and shrugged.

"I did end up swamping out the head a fair number of times, so some things about the Navy never change."

***

She let him tag along with her to the range but shooed him away when one of the proctors came over with a clipboard. He went where she'd waved him and played with some of the sleeker semiautos on offer until Cynthia tapped his shoulder and jerked her head toward the exit.

Her heels echoed loudly in the underground structure as she let Steve walk her back to her car.

"You know, I've got the rest of my qualifiers tomorrow. It's mostly a formality. But Alpha team are all up from DC to hang around the gym and cheer-lead."

"Sounds like a cheery bunch. I'm glad they've got your back."

She shrugged.

"They're a good team. I think you'd like them. You should come tomorrow. Meet them. Get a workout in. Give me another cheerleader."

"I see how it is," he chuckled, "haul in an old, slow dinosaur so you can look good next to him."

Cynthia snorted.

"You say that like I don't look good all on my own," she jutted out her hip and cocked her head to the side and did, in fact, look very, very good.

It kind of tore him up inside; he couldn't reconcile anything that he was feeling. She was beautiful and aliens were real and something that had the audacity to call itself a security council had tried to blow up New York and everyone Steve had known for longer than two weeks was dead and he was hungry and owned a motorcycle and had a telephone in his pocket and a head full of static.

"Strike gym's on the fifth floor, Cap," she said, swinging open the door of her little car and smoothly ducking into the seat. "See you at 0700."

***

Cynthia had made it clear that Steve was allowed to stay in the SHIELD apartment for the time being so that's where he stayed. It had a bed, it had some clothes, it had a basement garage and a table where he could set his motorcycle helmet and not eat dinner because he didn't know where to buy groceries or pots or pans or even if the kinds of food he used to bring up the creaky tenement stairs to boil into dinner were still something sold in stores or if everything was a brightly colored single serving in clear plastic under white lights. It made him miss the way his back had hurt from bagging beans and lifting them high over his head into one of the silver scales that seemed to drip from the sky like chandeliers in the markets Steve had scrounged pennies to shop at during the depression.

He ate some of the not-candy-bars from the case that had been delivered. They didn't make him feel less empty but they blunted an edge somewhere inside of him. Good enough.

He'd grabbed a complete discarded copy of _The Times_ from the breakroom earlier so he sat down to read it. He'd usually been able to find sections of the paper to read in the last couple days, which was good because he didn't know how to get coins to put in the newspaper machines he saw in the street. All his money was on the card in his wallet, the process of discovering how that could turn into paper and then into metal was exhausting to consider.

He read his paper cover to cover and tried to understand it.

The stories were nearly all beyond him, grounded in context that he didn't have. He knew what an earthquake was. He knew, generally, what a tsunami was. He could barely grasp the concept of what a boiling water reactor was or what radiation sickness could do. And that was before the stories deeper in started talking about alien anatomy and matter transference.

News was complicated.

The classifieds were better. People still wanted jobs and sold puppies and car parts and sent coded little missives.

The comics were a revelation. There was nothing with the grace and wonder and beauty of _Little Nemo_ , but he laughed out loud to see that _Nancy_ had a new strip right there in black and white.

He was thousands of miles and a hundred years and a broken heart away from home, but he could still read _Nancy_ in the paper the same as he did when he was sitting home with the flu waiting to die.

He didn't bother trying to sleep. He spread the comics across the table around his helmet and set down a notepad he'd taken from SHIELD on top of it. He had a pilfered Biro and hours to waste until the sun came up.

He filled page after page with little cartoons aping the shapes he saw in the paper. He didn't draw himself. He didn't draw Bucky.

He didn't draw Bucky.

He caught his hands starting to sketch the familiar outline of a skull and the sweet swoop of hair over its brow and he drew Nancy instead.

Drew Felix the Cat. Drew Lil' Abner. Drew Betty Boop.

He didn't sleep.

He didn't draw himself.

He didn't draw Bucky, two weeks ago, eyes wide in horror as he reached out a hand that Steve just hadn't held onto.

All he'd had to do -

He didn't draw Bucky.

He drew Mickey Mouse in a tank and Donald Duck on an iceberg and Betty Boop on the range with a big black rifle in her hands and a serious expression on her face and Nancy in a baggy USO dress like she'd borrowed it from a big sister and Little Nemo in his nightshirt floating along in his warm little bed, falling away from a train in the mountains to a stream where he'd settle as light as a leaf and wake up warm and safe and in the arms of his mother and -

He choked, and realized he was crying.

He didn't sleep.

He didn't draw himself.

***

"You're gonna have to shower before you meet him," Cynthia grumbled, extracting herself from the weight of Brock's arm and yanking her tank-top back down from where it had rucked up in the night. Jack was already fresh from washing up and was making coffee in the kitchen. Ugh. It was barely past five.

Brock grimaced at the cold air that rushed over him when Cynthia tugged the blanket off.

"We're all going to spend a lot of today sweating; I don't think he's such a delicate little flower that he's going to be offended by my personal bouquet," he wanted the blanket back. He wanted Cyn's tits in his mouth again. He wanted another three hours of sleep. He didn't want to get up at ass o'clock in the morning on a Saturday to play GI Joe Real American Hero with Rogers if he wasn't even going to get to have any fun with him today.

"It's not you, jackass," Cynthia said, stripping out of her sleep clothes and padding into the bathroom. "It's him. I don't want him to smell me on you."

"Aww, baby," Brock growled, getting interested enough to get up at last, "you think he's gonna smell your pussy on me? You been letting him get a whiff?"

She stuck her head back into the bedroom just so he could see her roll her eyes.

"You're disgusting, Brock."

He grinned wolfishly and stretched as he got to his feet.

"That's 'you're disgusting, Commander,' and don't you forget it."

***

Steve made himself go into the gym before anyone else got there. He had a card that let him into the building now, and the door on the fifth floor recognized him and brought up a picture of his face when he stood outside of it so he got in on his own.

He could do this.

Hell, if the door hadn't opened for him he'd have been able to break it down.

He could do this.

He found a conveyor belt with guardrails on the side of the room nearest the windows. There was an instrument panel that showed a picture of a man standing on it. It had instructions written in simple English.

Good enough.

He'd done seven miles and was starting to feel loose and warm by the time someone else opened the door. A faint reflection in the windows showed a tall, broad man with dark hair. Steve kept running.

More followed in the next few minutes; all big men in sweats and tee shirts, one or two with obvious holsters under their gym clothes. Sounds started rolling through the space. The pounding of Steve's feet was joined by clanking weights and the whicker-wish of jump-ropes and the squeak of sneakers on polished wood. Someone got on a treadmill two away from Steve's spot and started running at a much more sedate pace. Music started playing in the room - loud and warbling and grating at first but it had a heavy beat and eventually resolved into a simple melody. Steve adjusted his gait until his feet were hitting with the beat. It felt good. The music was good to run to.

He let himself sink into it, enjoying the unobtrusive presence of people sharing the same space. He let his mind unclench and just focused on the feelings of his body. It felt good to move his arms, it felt good to take deep breaths, it felt good to hear his feet on the running belt in time with the music.

His shoulders relaxed. His neck relaxed. Miracle of miracles, his jaw relaxed.

It was probably an hour before he was checked-in enough to his surroundings that he recognized the lilt of Cynthia’s voice approaching him from behind.

“Anyway, I’ve been keeping pretty busy without all you jarheads making a mess of my reports or getting into barfights at the drop of a hat. I made a friend in the Army, don’t have to put up with all you Marines anymore, right Cap?”

Steve hit the pause button on his running belt but jumped off before it came to a stop, landing lightly next to Cynthia.

“I mean, everybody knows soldiers pity sailors; of course I’ll let you tag along if some admiral was foolish enough to let you abovedecks.”

Cynthia sputtered and the man she’d been walking with ground to a halt, his face going slack for a moment, before exploding into loud, raspy laughter. He slapped Cynthia on the shoulder and bent double.

“Ah, god, Cyn, your face,” he choked out. 

Steve shifted a bit uneasily while Cynthia scoffed and threw up her hands.

“Traitors, traitors all of you,” she huffed. “Steve Rogers, meet a guy who’s an even older, bigger, pain in my ass than you are. Brock Rumlow, my CO.”

Rumlow had gotten his laughter under control and was offering a hand to Steve, eyes bright with mirth and a crooked smile on his face. He was only a bit taller than Cynthia, hard and angular, with a stiff brush of black hair and dark stubble on his jaw. Steve took his hand and shook.

“Cynthia’s said good things about you, Sir. Glad to meet you.”

Brock’s smile broadened.

“I’m pretty sure Captain outranks Commander, Sir, and we don’t stand much on ceremony around here, Rogers. Rumlow’ll do fine.”

Steve nodded easily.

“So, Rumlow, does the whole team always come out to heckle members through qualifiers or does Cynthia get special treatment because of her winning personality?”

Rumlow barked out another laugh.

“Well, we were all worried about her during the Battle of New York and we’d never leave a good man behind, but I will admit to some ulterior motives in making the trip to the city. You see, I thought I was going to try to do some recruiting for STRIKE but now it looks like all that effort’s wasted - I heard about a big, tough guy who might be lookin’ for work but, joke’s on me, it looks like he’s already lined up a gig as a standup comedian.”

“It’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it,” Steve chuckled. “It ain’t all sunshine bein’ the funny guy - just a couple days ago I had to try out new material on some real rough customers; the way they reacted got real ugly real fast. It was downright uncivilized, like something outta Jersey.”

“Hey, my Ma’s from Jersey,” Rumlow said with a smile.

“My condolences,” Steve replied immediately, and then it was Cynthia’s turn to cackle while Rumlow sputtered.

“I told you, he’s great. Sharp as a tack, quick as a whip,” Steve blushed at her praise and she continued, “I know there was some news footage but we’ve got more film of him in the field on file, you have to see it, Brock. We need him on the team.”

Rumlow turned to Steve with a nod.

“Whaddya say, Cap? Cyn thinks you’d be a good asset for STRIKE and says you’re spinning your wheels up here. Wanna give me a play-by-play on some of the video from the Battle and maybe then we can talk you into taking a little trip to DC?”

Steve shrugged, excited and uneasy. He was starting to like Rumlow, he already liked Cynthia. He agreed because he didn’t have anything better to do, and because watching himself fight aliens and nearly die was still a better way to spend the afternoon than sitting alone in his apartment.

***

They hit the showers first, Cynthia peeling off from the group while Rumlow and a couple of the big guys with obvious holsters followed Steve into the locker room. He stripped alongside them unselfconsciously and made his way to the bank of nozzles set high into a tiled wall.

He made the water hot and tuned his companions out while they chatted about the flight and the weather and baseball and dames.

He closed his eyes and willed himself to relax.

He heard a voice say “Apollo” and then he didn’t hear anything else for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cynthia Mercer is the creation of @StoatSandwich; she is a female HYDRA agent and the great-niece of Private Lorraine (the soldier played by Natalie Dormer who kisses Steve in CA:TFA).
> 
> You can read the one-page history that Fury gave to Steve and 2 pages of the textbook that Cynthia gave him over here at this post on my tumblr: https://buckybleeds.tumblr.com/post/611259044415537152/
> 
> Hugh Thompson Junior, who is mentioned in the “perspective shift: photography” section of the history book Steve reads, is maybe the truest definition of an American hero - he was responsible for reporting and attempting to end the My Lai massacre, landing his helicopter between American soldiers and the Vietnamese civilians they were attempting to kill and evacuating survivors of the massacre. He faced tremendous criticism for his actions and was ostracized for testifying against American soldiers. He was eventually awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for extraordinary bravery in flight. He threw it away.  
> You can read more about him being just the biggest swinging dick in the northern hemisphere here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson_Jr.  
> Additionally there was an opera written about his actions and dedicated to his bravery and to the survivors of the My Lai massacre, which includes music played on instruments made from artillery left in Vietnam after the war. You can see excerpts from that opera here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQu9lxaDsI8


	3. Morning Skies on my Mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to Deus3xMachina for beta reading this chapter and helping find the clarity that I am so utterly lacking.

There wasn’t any cold water running down his back yet, but he shivered where he knelt on the tile anyway. Just because there wasn’t any cold water now didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be some soon. 

He didn’t test it, didn’t struggle, didn’t get up and run, just knelt on the ground and waited to be told what his handler wanted from him.

He’d do it, probably. 

He might be able to get away. He might be faster and stronger than his handler or the others. But then they would chase him, they would catch him. They would show him what kinds of things happened when he wasn’t good for them.

He didn’t want to stay here on the floor.

He didn’t want to do the things they wanted when they told him to behave.

He didn’t want to be taught how to behave.

He shivered.

He waited for his handler.

Heard boots on tile.

“Sweetheart, look at me.”

His pulse ratcheted up as his eyes lifted. Familiar features, a cold smile. He avoided looking into his handler’s eyes.

“Honey, what’s my name?”

He shook his head and his body shook itself. Felt the echo of electricity shuddering through and over him, burning between his legs. He remembered how this game was played.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please,” sometimes they were kinder when he begged, “I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

The handler reached out a hand to cup his face, ran a gentle thumb over his lips.

“Shh, shh, that’s okay, you’re okay. You don’t have to know my name. Do you know who I am?”

He did and he didn’t. They didn’t explain things to him, didn’t tell him their expectations or why what was happening to him was happening. He didn’t know why this man was in charge of him, only that he was.

“You. You tell me what you want.”

He glanced up and saw an unpleasant smile on the handler’s face.

“And what do I want, sweetheart?”

Steve swallowed.

“I’ll - I don’t know.”

The handler took something out of his pocket. A little case, which he opened up to reveal a glittering needle.

Steve didn’t move, didn’t run. Didn’t want to know what would happen.

Didn’t feel the needle, just let the world in front of him get dark.

***

The smell of antiseptic burned in Steve’s nose as he slowly came back to consciousness in the SHIELD infirmary. 

There was none of the panicked confusion he’d felt when he first woke up in the 21st century, there was no question about where or when he was - largely because there was a huge flatscreen TV playing a CGI children’s film silently on the wall in the periphery of his vision - and it felt.

Strange. Wrong. Right?

Odd to wake up feeling sure of himself when he had no idea what he was waking up from. 

“So did you not figure it was worthwhile to mention the fact that you’re basically starving to anyone, or were you just not aware of it?”

The dark-haired man casually reading a magazine next to the bed was familiar but it took a second to remember him. Rumlow. Cynthia’s CO. Cynthia had hinted that maybe it’d be nice to have Steve on her team and Steve had gone and ruined that by fainting in the gym just like the hundred-pound asthmatic he really was at heart.

Steve blinked at the ceiling.

“I know what starving feels like. I sure don’t feel like I’m starving.” He’d been hungry in the last couple weeks, maybe, ate a pile of hamburgers the other day because it felt like he should. But there was none of the raw ache, hunger that turned to hurt that turned to nausea that turned to nothing that he remembered from childhood. Hell, how could he be starving if he basically didn’t have an appetite?

Rumlow put down his magazine and leaned forward in his chair, bracing his elbows on his knees and peering pointedly at Steve, who felt uncomfortable enough with the focused attention to make himself sit up in the creaky little infirmary cot so he could at least look the other man in the eyes.

“So starving’s one thing, and fair enough, you’d know what that’s like. Malnutrition is another thing, and you probably know what that’s like too but don’t know what the one feels like without the other. Have you been eating the nutrition bars we sent up to you?”

Steve frowned.

“Who’s we? They told me SHIELD’s doctors formulated them.”

Rumlow frowned harder.

“Boy, they’re sure treating you like an officer alright. Feeding you shit and keeping you in the dark all damn day,” he crossed his arms. “‘We’ is STRIKE. It was technically a STRIKE team that recovered you from the arctic and you were technically assigned to STRIKE as soon as you came into SHIELD to get caught up on things - that’s why Cyn was paired up with you. The nutrition bars were reformulated based on numbers we got from SHIELD but they’re a modified version of standard STRIKE rations - we eat ‘em on missions because we’ve gotta pack light but we make sure they don’t cheap out and send us to the field with MREs or something else that tastes like shit. So, have you been eating them?”

Steve shrugged.

“Had a couple for dinner last night.”

“Did you eat anything else?”

“Wasn’t hungry.”

Rumlow pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and a deep line formed between his eyebrows. It was a comfortingly familiar expression that Steve was well used to inspiring in senior officers everywhere.

“And did ‘not being hungry’ somehow change the nutritional guideline packet that came with the bars?”

Steve was starting to get a little pissed. Rumlow was right, nobody was telling him anything, and except for Cynthia (who told him whatever he needed to know whenever he needed to know it) that was beginning to seem intentional.

“What nutritional guideline packet? I got a box of candy bars and when I asked Miss Mercer she told me they were to supplement my diet. Was I supposed to get a slideshow and a textbook about the history of digital nutrition along with it?”

Rumlow laughed so abruptly that it sounded like a cough and stood up from his chair.

“Glad you’re feeling better, Princess, but don’t be a shit to me because you passed out and are feeling defensive about it; I’m doing my job and trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again so I don’t need whatever this attitude you’ve got is.”

Steve took three deep breaths and clenched his jaw before he spoke again.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t eat breakfast today or dinner yesterday; got to the gym early and started running. I don’t remember fainting, I just remember getting in the shower and then waking up in here.” 

He looked down at himself and, seeing nondescript gray sweats and a white tee shirt, grimaced. 

“Any idea whose clothes I’m borrowing?”

Rumlow’s shoulders relaxed and he seemed to be doing the same forced-calm-breathing thing that Steve had done to come down from confrontation.

“No idea, sorry. You fell down and we called the infirmary, we tossed a towel over you before the nurses showed up but this fashion statement,” he flapped his hand up and down in Steve’s general direction, “happened sometime after that.”

Steve groaned and rolled his eyes.

“I’m really starting to get tired of waking up in underwear of unknown origins.”

Rumlow chuckled.

"Let's get some food in you, big guy. We can worry about the rest later."

***

After a trip to the locker room to change into his own panties Rogers was charming at lunch. He stuck close to Cyn but joked around with some of the guys well enough to make them laugh and slap the table. He'd been sharp and alert and surprisingly with it, so clever that Rumlow had a hard time believing he was drugged at all, but he'd eaten the ration bars Brock gave him immediately and with good grace. 

It was actually a little frightening. One of those bars probably had enough barbiturates to drop a horse, to say nothing of the antipsychotics in them, and Rogers plowed through them like a lawnmower all while maintaining a snarky, rapid rant about the Yankees.

Fuckin’ supersoldiers.

They let him tag along with the group for the rest of Mercer’s assessments. Rumlow printed up a nutrition sheet for him, Steve emailed Fury about his STRIKE assignment from his phone with only minimal coaching and stumbling, Romanov popped her head in briefly to menace everyone.

Standard working Saturday.

Brock wanted to scream.

He wanted to corner Cyn and start planning more intensive recruitment of Rogers, he wanted to debrief with Pierce, he wanted Rogers on his knees and crying again.

He settled for a cigarette.

Finally,  _ finally _ , Cynthia stood in the basement and waved at Rogers as he started up his big clunky Harley. They waited until he was out of sight before dropping their smiles and marching back upstairs to the conference room.

The Secretary didn’t make them wait - he was at the head of the table when Rumlow opened the door.

“Well, we’ve got proof that he can be activated seamlessly. I suppose there’s probably some limit on that, something that will break through if we push him too hard,” Pierce was in a light gray suit against the blown-out, hazy blue of the fading day that flooded through the wall-high windows. He looked angrier than the successful test should have made him. 

Cynthia shrugged.

“Right now, yes. If we gave him orders that compromised him so much he’d fight us to injury, if he got away - yes. We could lose him that way. But once he’s more conditioned that will be less of a risk.”

Pierce rummaged at the console near the head of the table and came up with a bottle full of amber liquid and a glass.

“We can’t condition him until we can knock him out without it tipping him off.”

Cyn strode up to stand beside him and took the bottle out of his hands, delicately pouring two fingers into the heavy glass, filling the room with the oaky-mossy smell of Scotch.

“Well then the first part of the conditioning will be making sure he eats his vegetables like a good little boy. Once the drugs are in his system on a more stable schedule he’ll be more suggestible and less - inquisitive.”

Rumlow snorted.

“He’s showing off constantly. He’s the class clown. Don’t you think someone’s going to notice if he’s suddenly going along to get along?”

“He’s showing off to you because he wants to look good in front of me,” She set the liquor back on the side table and took a seat beside the Secretary. “I’m the only one he talks to, he knows you talk to me, he wants me to keep liking him, he wants you to like him. Nobody else is going to notice anything because he’s never said more than ten words to them and he’s not going to notice he’s slowing down or playing nice so long as someone gives him a hug or laughs at his jokes once in a while. He’s desperate; all he cares about right now is approval, so show him approval and he’ll do anything you want without question.”

Rumlow leaned against the window and considered rooting around for his own glass and pouring his own drink. Probably a bad play.

“He questioned it when I told him he was already a part of STRIKE. This whole plan hinges on access, and a lot of it. What if he decides he wants to ‘find himself’ or gets adopted by Stark or some shit?”

Cynthia smirked. It was cute. Did interesting things to her mouth.

“You’re giving him too much credit, Brock. He’s attention-starved and desperate for direction. If we invite him to DC tomorrow he’ll be on the next flight.”

***

Manhattan on a Saturday a few days after getting invaded by aliens was jarring.

He didn’t have anywhere to be and that meant he got to look at all the places he didn’t go when he was being herded and babysat during the day and what he saw broke his heart.

The city couldn’t decide if it wanted to hold a funeral or throw a parade so it settled on both and neither at the same time. 

Steve rode past people drinking and dancing in the street, he rode past piles of concrete and masonry in front of destroyed buildings and as he rode by another facade gave up its structure and crumbled in front of him; revelers and people on their way home and residents alike stopping in their tracks to stare at the sudden puff of concrete dust glowing in the late afternoon sunshine.    
Steve’s head was full of clouds and cotton and he found himself putting his bike on the sidewalk and running into the shattered lobby of what had once been a tower open to the heavens to see if he could help.

And it turned out he couldn’t.

He could move concrete, he could lift pillars, he could pull open vaults and jump through shattered floors to look for anything. Any survivors. Any bodies.

But it didn’t exactly help. 

Steve knew. He wasn’t alone sifting rubble and waiting for flashing lights and first responders who never showed up. He was lost, they were lost, the city was lost. He could see it on their faces. These people were full of the same kind of howling emptiness that ripped into his thoughts every time he paused for breath.

He remembered the stories of mourning his mother had told him and wondered if the pain he shared with these other lost people felt like weeping women to them too, or if they had other beasts that moved inside of them.   
It was hard to believe, as selfish as it was, that they weren’t all mourning the same disaster.

But if he shifted rock and tore metal he didn’t have time to breathe, he didn’t have time for his mind to moan and cry and demand he only ever lift his voice to sing  _ Caoineadh ar Séamus O Bearain _ .

Eventually they reached the bottom of the rubble.

There was nothing there to find, nothing in the wider world to find either.

The sun was rising and still these mourners were together, and still they were alone.

Steve rose from the basement with the other mourners or looters or hopeful or survivors or whatever they could be called. They were anointed with sweat and marked with ash, stumbling hollow-eyed into the morning.

Steve hadn’t confessed, he couldn’t go to Mass. He went to his apartment and knelt by his bed and saw the ghosts of the shambling, red-eyed people he’d dug beside until night turned to day.

He tried to pray for them and couldn’t.

His head was full of clouds and cotton, the words he heard pouring out from his lips were the same as they’d been for weeks now.

“Lord, let perpetual light shine upon him -”

He could get that far, but Steve couldn’t beg for peace for Bucky when he knew he was the reason it would be denied.

“Let perpetual light shine -”

Gray clouds in his head, swallowing his thoughts like they’d swallowed the struggling figure falling from the train.

“Let the light shine -”

His shoulders shook but his voice was firm as he forced the words through clenched teeth.

“Shine -”

Despair was a sin.

_ O, God, I am heartily sorry. _

He fell asleep on his knees.

***

Steve woke up with his eyes stinging from the bright morning light and some asshole pounding on his door.

“Uuugh,” he groaned, as he rolled to his knees and stood up from the hard, wooden floor he’d been sleeping on. He was stiff and disoriented and not sure why falling asleep next to his bed instead of on had seemed like a reasonable plan last night.

_ BANG BANG BANG _

He was also not sure who was so forcefully rousing him from his stupor, or why they were bothering.

“In a minute,” he bellowed, then stretched out his limbs and checked that his face wasn’t covered in drool and his dick wasn’t hanging out. He was clear. Good enough to open the door and tell off some asshole.

“Whaddya want,” Steve grumbled as he abruptly yanked the door open.

Rumlow and Cynthia were there holding bags of groceries and looking more presentable, respectable, and awake than Steve was.

“Fuck,” Steve said, and turned back into his apartment, leaving the door open behind him.

Rumlow cackled.

“Not a morning person, Princess?”

“I don’t mind mornings, Commander, I just ain’t much of a people person.”

Rumlow barked out another laugh and Steve heard cabinet doors opening and metal objects clanking in his kitchen.

He whirled through his room, trying to find a shirt that matched the level of ‘nice’ that Cynthia had brought with her in the form of a periwinkle cardigan and delicately pink, knee-length church dress. Rumlow had had something with buttons. Steve thought he had a shirt with buttons that wasn’t in an aggressively checkered pattern but his brain was having enough trouble catching up to his hands that he couldn’t find it.

“So to what do I owe the pleasure,” Steve shouted through the door. 

Pants. He could do pants. Pants were easy. Except those ones that had a bloodstain on the knee. And these ones with concrete dust ground in. And why would brand-new dungarees have holes in them? 

“We wanted to ask you something,” Cynthia shouted back. The sound of rushing water was adding a nice counterpoint to the clatter on the counters that got even sweeter when it was joined by the smell of fresh ground coffee. 

Okay, black pants with no dust. Checkers, but sedate. Shoes. Good? Good. 

Wait, not good, toothbrush.

“Why does asking me something involve invading my kitchen?”

He shoved the toothpaste-ified toothbrush in his mouth and strained to hear past his scrubbing sounds.

“Because you can’t reliably feed yourself based on any evidence I’ve seen and also I wanted bacon and am generous enough to share,” Rumlow replied.

Steve spit. That probably wasn’t enough brushing but it would have to do.

“Also because Cyn thinks if we teach you to scramble eggs that you might be willing to do so without direct supervision.”

Steve scowled at them when he thought he was maybe just hiding in his room instead of making himself more presentable.

“I can cook eggs. And bacon.”

“Doesn’t much seem like it,” Cynthia said, pointedly investigating an empty cabinet as Rumlow cut chunks of butter on the counter. Steve saw a couple of pans on his small range, an open egg carton, and a plastic package with a slab of bacon the size of a phone book.

Steve took the diced butter from Rumlow and tipped it into one of the pans, flapping his hand irritably toward the kitchen table to indicate that they should sit. 

“I can cook fine. I don’t know where you find eggs and bacon and butter when every corner has a bodega that might have cans of beans but sure doesn’t have any greens and there ain’t a butcher for twenty blocks.”

Cynthia had brought cream for the coffee, along with salt and pepper. Steve poured a little of each into a bowl and then began cracking eggs into it.

“That - that didn’t occur to me,” she looked upset. That wouldn’t do.

“You’ve been an angel for me,” Steve said. “I wouldn’t have the shirt on my back without you. You’ve made everything easier. You don’t gotta worry about me in your off hours, I’m sure it’s not your job to take me to the grocery store and hold my hand while I fret over your weird future prices and packages on a Sunday morning.”

The bacon had a weird plastic string zipper, which he pulled to prove his point before unwrapping the (pre-sliced!) meat and separating a few strips into the empty pan. He whisked the eggs with a fork while the bacon started to make some noises.

“Now, do you like your bacon chewy or crispy, and what did you want to ask me?”

***

It was unsurprising that watching a hastily-dressed Captain America with bed-head and a bright smile expertly cooking breakfast for you was a better Sunday morning activity than wallowing in guilt with the rest of the Catholics. What surprised Rumlow was that watching Captain America make some eggs and bacon was actually sexier than a lot of the actual sex that Brock had had in his life.

“If this is what happens when I bring you groceries I kind of want to ask you to come home with me,” he said, before he’d really registered that he was speaking.

Rogers laughed and Cynthia slapped Brock’s arm, shooting him a dirty look.

“We wanted to ask you to come to DC with us, to train with STRIKE for a couple months and see if it’s a good fit,” she said, leaning in to make it look like she was paying attention to Steve but letting the set of her shoulders say that she was expending a lot more energy being pissed at Brock.

“Yeah, like I said, come home with me,” he drawled, purely to be a shit because he enjoyed being a shit and was good at it. “And chewy, with runny eggs.”

“Someday you’re going to get salmonella and you’re going to deserve it,” Cynthia snapped at him before turning her doe eyes on Rogers. “Medium, with  _ my  _ eggs fully cooked, thank you.”

Rogers nodded and shuffled a few things on the stove, not thinking for a moment and allowing himself to be occupied by the simple tasks of filling the coffee pot and turning the bacon.

“What would it be like if I went to DC? Same as it is here? Apartment, acclimatization, assessment?”

Brock snorted.

“No, because if you come to DC I’m your CO and that all sounds like a lot of boring paperwork to me.”

Cyn rolled her eyes at Brock and shot Rogers a sweet, sunny little smile. 

“It would be kind of like here. We get sent out on assignments but when we’re not on mission we’re training and getting you up to speed is just a specialized kind of training, right?”

Rogers hummed noncommittally and shoved the eggs around in the pan. It was starting to smell good in the kitchen as the bacon sizzled and the eggs solidified.

“And we can get you an apartment, I was going to help you look here anyway, but there’s no rush. There’s base housing and a couple of the guys are always kicking around between places or girlfriends or whatever. You could get to know us more. Get to know this century more.”

Rogers’ back was a mass of knots, visible through his stodgy plaid shirt. 

It made Brock want to feel those big muscles tighten under his hands, feel the fear turn Rogers to obedient stone.

“What would I have to do to run missions with you?” He pulled plates out from a cabinet and began serving up.

“Not much,” Brock stood up from the table and grabbed some coffee mugs, filling three to pretend to play house for a minute. “You’re still considered active duty in the Army, SHIELD’s doctors will have you cleared once your nutrition is stabilized. You passed the psych exams and you just saved New York from aliens. You’re cleared now, as far as I’m concerned.”

Rogers put food down in front of Cynthia and Brock but hovered, holding his own plate by the sink. 

“And what happens if I stay here?”

Cynthia shrugged.

“Pretty much what’s been happening. STRIKE Delta is stationed in the city this year so you’d work with Henderson’s team. You could keep looking for your own apartment. If you want to you could even see about getting discharged, leaving the service as a whole. It’d be whatever you wanted. We can make it happen.”

Rogers frowned and turned the idea over in his head. Brock could  _ see  _ him visualizing another month of empty nights in this empty apartment.

He joined them at the table. 

“So when do we go to DC?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Caoineadh ar Séamus O Bearain_ roughly (and badly) translates to “lament for James Barnes” - if you speak Irish Gaelic and would like to provide a better name for a lamentation (and be given credit here in the notes) please let me know.


	4. June is the Same

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million thanks to Deus3xMachina for beta-ing.

“Again,” Rumlow shouted from the wide mats at the bottom level of the gym. Steve heard some of the guys on the team groan but he just walked to the end of the ceiling support strut like a gymnast on a balance beam and flung himself over the edge, controlling the timing of his spin so that he was able to land on his feet and push off into a quick tumble to bleed off excess energy from his four-story fall.

Rumlow gaped at him and Steve smirked back.

“You’re taking the elevator next time or I’m writing you up,” the commander growled, “I can’t have Captain Fucking America breaking his neck on my watch.”

They started the drill again and Steve let himself sink into the physicality of it, scaling the wall, flinging the shield, covering his teammates to protect them from simulated enemy fire. It felt sane and logical and  _ right  _ to be here with these people, taking care of them and fighting off danger.

  
  


***

He’d hoped the barracks would be busy and rustling and as loud and crowded as a Brooklyn tenement in 1940; they were actually quieter than the silent, sanitized apartment Fury had installed him in.

Every night the others on the team went home, the building staff filtered out, and Steve started to feel like the scruffy guard dog Mr. Svenson used to lock in the grocery store - skittish and wild and more likely to leap into your arms to lick at your face than to bite an intruder.

He sat on his bed and his eyes bored holes in the darkness and the quiet kept him awake.

The last time he’d lived through a night this quiet it was in London during the Blitz. 

The cleaning crew got in at 0400. They made enough noise that he could catch a couple hours before training every day.

***

Nobody had noticed that Rollins’ breathing hose was disconnected. 

Steve didn’t know how to use SCUBA gear so he’d been left on the pool deck to watch the planned maneuvers before they settled on an approach - everyone else was in the water and in their own gear and focused on their own tasks and didn’t see the large man waving his startled arms in slow motion while great gluts of bubbles rushed out of his mask and to the ceiling. 

Their wetsuits were weighted; the weight belts had a simple clasp release that probably worked well if you weren’t wearing thick underwater welding gloves.

Rollins was going to drown before anyone else even turned to look at him.

Steve took about half a second to realize all of that and was in the water before he remembered that he couldn’t swim. 

Because where would a little shrimp from Brooklyn learn to swim? Pools from Steve’s day weren’t like this big blue olympic-length monstrosity, pools from his day were all closed due to polio and expensive besides. And it’s not like there were lots of opportunities to perfect his breast stroke on the front. 

So Steve jumped into the water and aimed himself generally at Rollins and kicked because that’s what it made sense to do and somehow made it to the big man, knocking his struggling hands away to release the weights.

Rollins rose up in the water, drifting away like a panicked silver balloon and Steve watched him go.

Steve’s own dense, muscular body didn’t seem inclined to float after him. He tried to kick and only succeeded at turning himself upside down. He tried to wave his arms and was reminded that no one had seen Rollins waving either. 

Suddenly the water around him seemed very heavy and very wet and he maybe wanted to open his mouth to scream a little and maybe thought if he did he’d drown again and maybe they’d wake him up again and maybe that was all he was going to be forever, just drowning always and that was no way to be and -

He was about to open his mouth and start screaming.

That wouldn’t accomplish anything. 

He let himself sink, let his feet find the ground and let the air in his lungs orient his body. When he was sure his head was pointed up he raised his arms over it, making himself into an arrow. He gathered his legs. He leapt.

He managed to get one broad palm on the lip of the pool and scrabbled himself out like a soaked rat, lying flat in a puddle and hyperventilating while he listened to Rollins’ watery breaths nearby. 

An abrupt alarm sounded. A bright light flashed. 

Helmets started rising out of the deep water in the pool and faces turned to him, reflective masks blinking in the shifting blue light.

Rumlow’s head broke the surface and he tore his mask and regulator off his face.

“What in the name of God is going on up here?”

“New plan,” Rogers gasped, “first somebody needs to check all the equipment, second somebody needs to teach me how the fuck to swim.”

***

Cynthia came over with movies on the weekends, starting with Disney films and studio musicals.

_ Singing in the Rain _ was deeply weird - the singing and the dance numbers were nice and all but the fifteen-minute dreamworld showcase seemed awkwardly crammed in. The Disney flicks were mostly fine, still for children but still beautifully animated. Steve expressed an affection for  _ Fantasia  _ so Cynthia brought him the original and the version from 2000 and he loved it and only sat in the shower thinking the number 2000 over and over again for an hour that night.

Sixty years between the bright, sweet cartoons he’d watched as a young man and the bright, sweet cartoons he watched as a young man. A whole life frozen away.

He tried not to worry about it too much.

He didn’t have to worry about where to buy groceries because there was a cafeteria onsite and he didn’t have to do much cooking.

He didn’t have to worry about breaking bags open when he went to the gym in the middle of the night because he could literally climb the walls and so he  _ did _ , pacing vertically because staying on the ground didn’t distract him enough.

He tried not to worry when he did laps in the big equipment pool, lights off and building quiet, distracting himself with visions of sharks and sea monsters and anything except the thought of cold water rising or the yawning gap of seventy years between him and everything he’d ever know.

Cynthia came over with movies on the weekends. He watched them and tried to catch up and tried not to think about why he needed to catch up.

***

They had him on comms for the first op they took him on. 

The team worked well together and over a headset was a good place to observe that.

It also meant there was nothing that he could have done to keep Pritchard from catching a bullet. 

It was hard to remember that at the funeral.

Steve tried to stay at the back and keep his big nose and big hands and big presence out of the way so that the people who actually knew the man could mourn and hug each other and swap stories about him.

A couple of younger people wearing black approached him at the reception with a cellphone out and ready and asked him for a selfie. It was the kind of thing that happened a lot when he left the SHIELD campus and it seemed awkward and uncomfortable in those circumstances; at the funeral for a colleague it seemed ghoulish and all he could do was anxiously stammer and make unhappy faces until Rumlow came to rescue him.

“Does anyone in your fanclub have even a shred of common decency?” There was a nasty energy radiating off of Rumlow. He’d been lead on the op, he’d been the one who deemed the slight exposure of Pritchard’s position an acceptable risk. 

“Maybe,” Steve answered, “but they sure don’t have good timing.”

Rumlow snorted and stalked away.

***

The team had an annual barbecue on Memorial Day. It was probably going to be somewhat subdued, being the weekend after the funeral. 

Rollins swung by the empty barracks and picked Steve up.

“It’s fucking depressing in here, man,” he said.

Steve shrugged.

“Why don’t you start looking for someplace else?”

Steve shrugged again. It was getting a lot easier to not have answers to those sorts of questions. He was getting better at not worrying, at thinking about nothing.

“You change your mind about staying there, you let me know. Me and Brock got a spare room you could stay in.”

“I don’t want to be a bother,” and he didn’t. He knew his caged-tiger pacing and midnight swimming and staring contests with the walls wouldn’t be considered good roommate behavior. 

They went to the barbecue. It was full of sad people eating coleslaw and grilling cheap hotdogs. 

Steve stood under a tree holding a warm bottle of beer until Higgins dragged him over to the center of a little knot of guys sitting around a table shooting the shit.

“Christ, this is hard,” Higgins sighed after a few minutes of listless chatter. Everything kept circling back to Pritchard. 

“How did you handle it,” Higgins asked as he turned his attention to Steve.

Steve drew a blank.

“Handle what?”

“Losing Barnes. Losing a squadmate. How’d you get past that?”

A wild, awful laugh bubbled out of Steve’s chest and landed wet and awkward and messy in the air, killing all the quiet conversations at the surrounding tables. He tried to bite down on it, swallow it back into silence but it kept running out of him until he wasn’t sure if he was still laughing or if it had spun into sobs. He managed to slow the noises down and suck in a couple breaths until he could talk.

“The fuck are you talking about ‘handle it,’” he put the heels of his hands over his eyes closing out the sunshine, “it was last fucking month, I ain’t handling shit.”

***

Rollins wouldn’t take Steve back to the barracks after he ruined the barbecue, insisting on driving him to the bland, dry-rotted condo he shared with Brock Rumlow. It was in a rat’s nest of a gated community, one of a thousand identical, cheaply made homes on one of a hundred identical, dull cul-de-sacs. Inside it was a little bit messy and smelled just slightly of gym socks. There was a dog barking nearby and the room Rollins herded Steve into had a poster for a band he’d never heard of on the wall and a dusty weight rack and bench in the corner. 

Steve wanted to beg Rollins to let him stay forever.

Brock came home a couple hours later, toting in two crates of nutrition bars and a gym bag that held all of Steve’s worldly possessions.

“You don’t have to talk about it. You don’t have to tell us what you’re feeling,” he said, and the wave of gratitude that washed over Steve nearly swept him away. “Just try to keep it together in polite company, you hear me?”

He heard.

He tried to make it work.

Life with Rumlow and Rollins was better than living alone in the barracks. Rollins turned the radio on in the mornings and Steve could listen to the news, hear ads for movies and furniture stores and banks. Rumlow played video games and burned dinner every night until Steve took over cooking dinner, then Rumlow just played video games. They ate better for having Steve in the house - roasts and thick sandwiches and whole chickens for the three of them to share and nutrition bars twice a day to keep Steve topped off.

Rollins started taking Steve to the store, Rumlow started including him in his games. Steve preferred the one with the little cartoon racecars to the fighting games even though he never won at either.

Cynthia came over to watch movies with them, but Rumlow and Rollins vetoed cartoons and musicals. They watched goofy action flicks and pirate movies and movies with aliens and monsters instead. Steve liked the new movies but he missed the cartoons.

Time passed. Weeks passed. He trained at work, he cooked and played video games at home. 

He sat up late into the night and stared at the Van Halen poster and moved weights around, stacking them and unstacking them as quietly as possible until his brain fuzzed out enough for him to get a couple hours of sleep.

It was better. 

Slightly.

***

“You haven’t triggered him once since he came to DC. What’s the holdup?”

Pierce was in his high-up office behind his high-class desk glaring at Brock and Cyn like they were shit on his shoes.

“It hasn’t even been -”

Cynthia cut Brock off before his big mouth could get him in trouble.

“He doesn’t sleep, sir. Not regularly. And he’s getting more manageable with the medication being delivered on a more regular schedule but he still knows what day it is. If we trigger him and he loses time he’ll get suspicious. He’s drugged and depressed but he’s not stupid.”

Pierce hummed and drummed his fingers.

“Figure something out. If we can’t use him he’s a liability.”

“Yes sir,” Cynthia said, and kicked Brock’s ankle when he opened his mouth to argue.

***

He was going to try to come up with a plan, honest. It was just a pure accident that he ended up not needing to.

He’d come home to find Jack alone in the kitchen, grabbing a beer out of the fridge, and playfully grabbed his ass. One thing led to another led to another and soon enough Brock had Jack backed up against the sink and panting into his mouth, beer forgotten on the counter as he ground himself down on the thigh crammed between his thick legs. 

Brock barely heard the gasp from the living room but looked over to see Rogers staring and blushing from the doorway.

“Take a picture or join in but don’t just stand there staring,” he said. Jack froze as he realized they had an audience. Steve’s mouth dropped open and his blush got darker as he looked away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, quiet and strained, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to - I won’t tell anybody, I - ”

Brock snorted.

“Tell whoever you want, Princess, we’ve had a civil union for three years but if you’re gonna stay for a show either you’re playing along or I’m charging you to watch.”

Jack groaned and shoved Brock’s shoulder.

“You fucking prick,” he hissed, and turned to Steve. “It was illegal in your time, right, for two guys to be together? They could get arrested?”

Steve nodded, his blush still somehow managing to deepen as his eyes got wider.

“It’s not now,” Jack continued, “guys can be with guys, girls can be with girls, a guy can be with men or women. It’s. We can’t get married, but we can do everything but. Me and Brock have been together for five years. Cyn and Brock are sometimes together too. It’s not a big deal.”

“Are we gonna have a problem, Cap,” Brock ground out as Steve continued to stare, “you got some opinions on how it’s filthy and wrong and degenerate? Because if you do say so now so we all know what fucking page we’re on.”

Rogers still wasn’t talking and his face was still getting redder. His eyes were getting red too. Brock loved it. Every time he cried it made the blue so bright.

“Steve?” Jack’s voice was suddenly a lot softer. “Steve, are you okay?”

He finally tore his gaze away, looking at the ground instead of the men in front of him. Hiding his face.

“We’re not,” he was shaking his head, “not gonna have a problem. Me’n Buck,” he waved his hand at Jack and Brock, “ten years. Before. Before the train.” 

Rogers bit off the last word and slapped a hand over his mouth, trying to cut off the horrible whine tearing its way out of his chest. 

***

It felt like puking after a long night of drinking.

It’s what he hadn’t been able to say, hadn’t known how to say.

It wasn’t just that he’d lost a friend or a brother. It was that he’d also lost his future and his home, his cousins and his city. He’d lost all the letters home and all the years getting together with the Howlies when they came back, seeing everyone fatter and happier and greyer each year. He’d lost all of that.

And he’d lost the man he loved. Let him slip through his fingers. Couldn’t save him, could only watch him get smaller and smaller until he was gone and all that was left was a boiling void inside of him, swallowing everything good and spewing out pain. 

_ I loved him. I loved him and he was mine and I was his and I watched him die and it’s been forty nine days and seventy years and a thousand years and an eternity because every day that I’m alive and he’s not is like swimming through razorblades.  _

He hadn’t known how to say it until he saw Jack and Brock wrapped up in each other and proud of it and unafraid and god, the things he’d missed because he was too weak to just hold on were going to kill him again, swallow him whole and leave behind resentful bones. 

Jack moved first, pushing Brock out of the way and crossing the kitchen to wrap his arms gently around Steve and press his wet, red face into the soft cotton of his tee shirt.

“Jesus, sweetheart,” he murmured, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, we didn’t know.”

Steve was pretty sure the ugly choking noises filling the room were coming from him. He felt another warm body behind him, felt Brock’s strong hands squeezing his shoulders and stroking his hair.

“Steve, shit, it’s okay. It’s okay just let it out, it’s okay, we’re here.”

He wasn’t sure where they were going, wasn’t sure who was moving him or how. All he knew is that soon he was settled between them on something soft, still wailing into Jack’s chest and being petted by Brock. He felt a gentle kiss behind his ear and a gentle kiss on his forehead, and he sobbed until it was all that he knew, and then he didn’t know anything at all.

***

Jack had barely finished the words, the ‘d’ from “shield” still on his tongue, before Brock was wrestling Rogers onto his back and slapping his hot, wet, red cheek.

“Open your fucking mouth,” he growled, and watched the fear settle in around Rogers’ eyes. He didn’t know where he was or why he was crying, only that his handler had orders for him. He opened his mouth.

It was fire and delirium behind Rogers’ lips, heaven and hell and messy suction. His nose was stuffed up from crying so when Brock shoved himself all the way into his throat he choked and gagged and started to panic but got himself under control in time to save himself a punishment. Brock pulled back and let him breathe and slapped the other side of his face before plunging back inside. 

He set up a rhythm, pulling out to smack Rogers’ progressively wetter and grosser face then fucking into his mouth to make his face wetter and grosser by forcing out more tears and snot and drool with his cock. 

Rogers was nearly unconscious by the time Brock came. His eyes were mostly shut, his skin was blotchy red and starting to look bruised from all the slapping; spit had run down his chin to drip on his pretty tits. Brock pulled out when he finished and watched his spend stripe over Rogers’ face and glue his long lashes together.

“Welcome home, Princess,” he whispered into the shaking man’s ear, before settling back against the headboard to watch Jack take his turn.

***

He woke up to the painfully familiar feeling of gentle fingers stroking through his hair.

It was wrong. The bed was too soft, the smell was wrong, he felt the telltale ache behind his eyes that let him know he’d spent hours crying. 

He wasn’t home.

It wasn’t Bucky.

But it was somebody carefully petting him. There was a warm body pressed up against his front. 

So for a few minutes he let himself pretend and when he opened his eyes he hated himself for letting the hurting stop just long enough to be that much worse when recognition flooded through him.

Jack was carefully cradling him against his chest, resting Steve’s head on one large shoulder. Brock was pressed in behind him. Together they enveloped him, keeping him sealed off from the rest of the world. Safe. 

The light was different than he last remembered it. It was evening when he’d found them together in the kitchen. Now pale dawnlight was making its way through the shutters.

Steve felt like he’d slept more in one night than he had in the previous week.

Hell, that might even be accurate. 

Rumlow shifted behind him, tightened an arm around Steve’s waist.

It hadn’t even been two months since Bucky had died.

Nothing should have stopped that from hurting. He shouldn’t have allowed anything to make him feel better.

Warm between Rumlow and Rollins Steve probed his feelings. He wasn’t exactly feeling better - he felt guilty and ashamed and sore, but he also felt numb and like maybe he could sleep for a week.

_ Good enough _ , he thought, and closed his eyes again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you give me comments I sit on them like a dragon guarding its hoard and furiously hissing at anyone who might try to take them away from me. You can prevent innocent bystanders from being set aflame by giving me more comments to roll around in and cherish.


	5. I Should Learn to Cry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever Deus3xMachina is the beta of my dreams.
> 
> New warnings for Animal Death, Wetting, and Beyond Canon Levels of Gore; see end note for more comprehensive details.
> 
> (if you feel like I've missed a warning please drop me a comment so I can update the tags. If you'd like to tell me what time of day you're reading this or yell at me for being an asshole please drop a comment because I'm an ADHD disaster that requires positive feedback to get out of bed in the morning and I love comments. If you don't want to comment that's okay too and I hope you have an amazing day)

The Asset was inhuman. It had to be aimed to be fired, couldn’t feed itself, couldn’t remember its own name. But, for all of that, you could put a gun in its hands and assign it a task and it could go rabbiting off into the world and come back and your targets would be dead, no muss, no fuss, no risk to you and your team.

Cap was different.

You couldn’t release Project Morpheus in a warzone and expect him to come home, tail wagging and a bone in his mouth. The Soldier was a soldier. Rogers was a flamethrower made of muscle, an earthquake given flesh. When he was activated all that was left was dumb destruction with an extremely limited functional window, needing constant threats and supervision to keep him on-mission.

But both of them were beautiful. 

And both of them were devastatingly effective. 

***

They had four hours a night to start. Rogers was already afraid and obedient when triggered, but that obedience hadn't been tested. 

They knew there were limits with the Soldier. Knew they couldn't send it after little girls with brown braids, knew that it was risky to send it after blue-eyed blondes of any size, age, or gender (though that coloring combined with a pale complexion made for the best handlers). So even with wipes and seven decades of torture there were certain things the Soldier couldn't be trusted to do. 

They set out to try to see how far fear could carry their new asset. 

They started simple. 

"Put this on."

Rumlow held out a pair of bulky black pants, reinforced at the knees and with thick seams and raised, rubbery patches on the outside of the thighs. Rogers took them with shaking hands and stood up to dress himself. 

"And this."

A padded jacket, like his uniform. Thicker at the shoulders and elbows. Black like the pants. 

"These."

Ankle socks and heavy boots.

"These." 

Heavy leather gauntlets. 

"Hold still."

Brock had a pile of flexible adamantium bands. They locked around Rogers’ ankles and wrists, clicking shut with Brock's thumbprint. He particularly liked the way that the wide belt fastened  _ behind  _ Rogers.

He  _ especially  _ liked that the collar did the same, locking at the nape of his neck over the padded collar of the jacket. 

Rogers was still shaking.

"C'mon."

The basement of the Triskelion had lots of interesting, awful things behind closed doors. Brock walked Rogers from one of the interesting rooms to one of the more prosaic ones; the pistol range. 

There was a Colt 1911 on the bench and a target downrange.

"Shoot the dog."

The skinny shepard they'd pulled out of a shelter for this wasn't even whining or pulling at the lead. It was curled up, asleep, sedated, with its nose tucked into its fluffy tail. Should have been an easy shot. But Rogers was predictable. 

"Please," he whispered, "please don't."

Brock crossed his arms. 

"If you don't shoot the dog I will, it's getting a bullet, one way or another, but this is your last chance to do as you're told before today starts hurting."

He kept his eyes down and picked up the gun. He lifted his arms and his breathing hitched.

He stopped shaking and the barrel swung toward Brock.

“Oh, bad choice, sweetheart.”

***

The handler twitched his fingers and that was all that Steve saw before pain cut the floor out from under him. 

He collapsed, electricity coursing through the black suit he wore. The first bolt was big and nasty, burning him from head to toe, but then fell away in favor of snapping jolts of pain to his thighs or chest or the palms of his hands. It left him twitching and shuddering, uncertain of where the next pain would come from until finally the shocks faded

He stayed on the ground and slowed his breathing.

“Get up,” the handler said.

He got up.

“Shoot the dog,” the handler said.

He found the gun on the floor, still sitting where it had fallen out of his hand.

He picked up the gun. 

He tried to point it at his own head.

The shocks were bigger this time, broader and bolder. They tapered until he thought they were done. The handler twitched his fingers and another impossibly painful shock lit up Steve’s crotch; it felt like someone had shot his dick off with a cannon and he howled.

“Get up,” the handler said.

He got up.

“Shoot the dog.”

The gun was in his hand. He pointed it in the correct direction.

“Please,” he moaned, “don’t make me, please.”

“You’re not going to like what happens if you don’t shoot that fucking dog in ten fucking seconds.”

“Please, I’m sorry -”

“Ten.”

“Let me do something else -”

“Nine.”

“Please, please, I can’t -”

“Eight.”

“I can be good for you -”

“Seven.”

“I can be good, please -”

“Six.”

“Just use me don’t -”

“Five.”

“Don’t hurt the dog -”

“Four.”

“It’s just a dumb fucking animal -”

“Three.”   
“It didn’t do anything, don’t make -”

“Two.”

“Please, please don’t make me do -”

“One.”

Steve’s hands had been getting whiter and whiter around the grip of the pistol but his finger stayed off the trigger.

“I was hoping you’d do the stupid thing.”

The handler moved his fingers and Steve was dying.

This was what dying felt like; not pain, not lightning.

Dying felt cold.

He was cold so suddenly it was like he’d been thrown in ice water, like he was in the cabin of the Valkyrie and the ocean was chasing him toward the last little bit of air and light. The cold came on so fast that it knocked the breath out of him and he didn’t know how or what was happening until, all at once, he did.

Steve tried to tear at the bulky black suit they’d put him in, tried to rip open the coat but it was locked under a collar, stuck under the bands at his wrists and waist, sealed away by his handler’s fingerprints.

He fell to his knees and tried to tear at the fabric and found it wouldn’t pull apart - all his strength, Erskine’s miracle, and he couldn’t rip open a pair of canvas pants.

The handler was crouching next to him, smiling as Steve panicked. 

“We couldn’t get enough vibranium for your jewelry, Princess, but we got enough to weave threads through the suit. It’s a good thing, too; adamantium doesn’t transmit heat so well. If we hadn’t gotten the vibranium the chill feature wouldn’t have worked.”

Steve was keening through clenched teeth and trying to rip the jacket off his chest but no matter how much of a hold he got on the fabric he wasn’t strong enough to tear it.

“I’ve got ten levels to choose from. Right now you’re at one. I’m pretty sure ten puts you on ice until we decide to thaw you out again.”

The handler wiggled his fingers and a bright shock zapped in alongside the cold. Steve felt his bladder let go and the spreading wet patch was immediately so cold that it burned, a fiery frostbite on the inside of his thighs, as shameful as it was painful.

Steve tried to get a handle on his breathing, he stopped trying to shred the suit. 

“Please, please,” he begged, “make it  _ stop _ .”

“Shoot the dog.”

Steve didn’t even have to look.

The gun was in his hand, his finger was on the trigger, and all he had to see was the sudden darkening of the wall and reddening of the light in the periphery of his vision while he stared at his handler and pulled the trigger.

“M-make it s-stop,” he whispered.

The handler gently plucked the Colt out of his stiff grip and caressed his wrists with his thumbs, releasing the metal cuffs.

“Kneel and don’t move.”

Steve didn’t even nod in answer, just arranged his knees underneath him and stared at the ground in front of him trying not to scream.

The handler moved behind him, moved around him. Took off one metal cuff at a time, leaving the collar for last.

“Who do you belong to, honey,” he asked as he tickled his fingers through the short hair on the back of Steve’s neck, just above the collar.

“I d-don’t know.”

“Guess.” The fingers tapped at the metal but didn’t touch the lock that rested over the center of his spine.

Steve shook his head.

“Don’t you want this off? Don’t you wanna get warm?”

Steve nodded. 

“You wanna be good?”

Steve nodded.

“Then ask me who you belong to.”

His fingertips were blue and very far away.

“Wh-who d-do I belong t-to?”

The handler smiled.

“You’re HYDRA’s asset now. Hail HYDRA.”

Steve blinked up at him stupidly. It was getting harder to concentrate.

“Say it, honey. Tell me who owns you.”

“H-hydra.”

“Say the rest.”

He swayed on his knees. He couldn’t remember the rest.

“Be good, honey. Hail -”

“I c-can’t.”

“You will.” The collar fell off into his lap and everything else turned into fog.

***

Brock wouldn’t exactly call himself a necrophiliac, but honestly labels were beneath him in general. He didn’t call himself bisexual or a sadist either, but those probably applied to him.

It’s not that he wanted to fuck dead people, though. It’s just that a big muscular body turning lavender at the lips and dusted with ice crystals like powdered sugar got him going like nothing else ever had. Whether the person occupying that body was capable of responding was immaterial - Brock was just in it for the aesthetic.

He shucked the top of the uniform off of Rogers and marveled at how quickly it had frozen his sweat into a rime of frost that disappeared almost too quickly to be seen. He yanked down the pants and admired the red, raw area where Rogers had soaked himself in piss and made the pain all that much worse. It’d probably be a bitch to get out of the fabric but it was more than worth it as a deterrent.

It was incredible how well they’d conditioned him to shut down in response to the cold. He was malleable and dull, nearly drooling as his eyes went out of focus and color slowly started returning to his skin. 

Brock rubbed a warm thumb over his cheek and Rogers blinked, silent tears dislodged by the tiny motion. Brock waved at the one-way glass on the wall beside the range. Mercer walked a dog out to the remains of the first one. She tied its leash to the floor and walked away as it started lapping interestedly at the still-steaming puddle of blood.

He handed the gun to Steve, who blinked blearily up at him.

“Shoot the dog.”

He didn’t even turn his head. Just cut his eyes to the side and let the semiauto follow. A bang, a flash, a thud.

Good enough for his first real training.

Brock grinned and petted Rogers’ cheek again.

“Open your mouth.”

***

Steve didn’t sleep in the bed with Brock and Jack every night - not even most nights - but they were the nights that he almost never woke up screaming, and they were the nights when he fell asleep the fastest.

He could let himself luxuriate in the heat of their bed, petted and protected, and be asleep in minutes instead of staring at the ceiling for hours. When he stayed with them the warmth followed him into the next day, blunting the hard edges of his loneliness and making it hard to remember why he’d been hurting. The world felt soft with them, the future became less of a nightmare and more of a dream.

In the end he wasn’t even sure which of them had pushed things to the next level - did Jack kiss him to comfort him when he was lost in mourning? Did Steve let his hands linger admiringly on Brock’s trim waist until the heat between them took on a different tone?

He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t tell. He just knew that one day he was hurting, his mouth full of salt from swallowed sobs, and then there was another soft mouth on his, and rough hands on his hips, and he sank into the sweetness of it and let them carry his hurt for a little while.

It wasn’t every night. Not even most.

But it helped him sleep.

***

Steve Rogers, even a scared, bleeding, freezing Steve Rogers, was as bold and bright as brass. He might duck his head, he might beg, but he had a defiant streak that went to the core of him. Steve Rogers was dangerous, plain and simple. Kneeling, crying, it didn’t matter. You couldn’t tell what would set him off and make him turn all that terrifying power on the hand pulling the strings.

After two months it became clear that Brock had trained all the Steve Rogers out of Project Morpheus. 

The new Asset was dull to the point of stupidity once he’d been given his secondary trigger. He couldn’t be counted on to remember the steps of a plan or to recognize that some change in circumstances might come crashing down around him and leave him as nothing more than a greasy spot on the floor. 

It made him useless for long ops and unstoppable in the short term.

The first mission they tested him on was local. Upstart drug dealers in Maryland trying to cut out the middleman, not realizing their middleman was HYDRA. 

They sent Rogers in with two handlers, both of whom had the haptic control gloves used to manipulate his suit. They’d dropped his second trigger ten minutes before ingress, activating the suit and getting him to optimal temperature just in time to back the unlabelled van up to the cinderblock wall of a decaying downtown structure. 

“Break down the wall. Kill everyone on the other side.”

He didn’t even have his shield. 

The wall took two body blows before the concrete crumbled in a gap large enough to let him through. 

Footage from the camera mounted on his harness was difficult to parse after the fact but it appeared that he’d mostly punched through people like he’d punched through the concrete.

Kildare, the secondary handler, made the grievous mistake of following Rogers through the gap and therefore turning himself into someone on the other side of the wall. He died about as quickly as the others, in spite of his helmet and tac gear.

Rumlow waited until the hurricane of blood downgraded to a tropical storm of viscera. 

“Asset, stop killing things and return to the van,” Rumlow flicked his wrist to send a brief wave of cold to emphasize the order.

Rogers came back to the van. He was no longer killing things. He  _ was _ , however, painted with blood, so soaked with it that his eyes seemed to glow amid the gore. 

“Why are you fucking covered, what did you do, roll around in it,” Rumlow huffed, trying to wipe away some of the mess while lower-ranking members of STRIKE went into the room and retrieved the remnants of Kildare.

He shrugged.

“ _ Did _ you roll around in it?”

He shrugged again.

“It was warm.”

***

Cynthia cuddled with him on the couch one day. Jack and Brock were out so cartoons were back on the menu.

She’d brought over Sleeping Beauty and Steve had been arrested by the beautiful contrast of the animation, the clean, smooth backgrounds and the elegant lines. He didn’t notice Cynthia was leaning on him until she was practically in his lap, at which point he went still, like he was scared of spooking a skittish horse.

She nuzzled the side of his neck.

“You’re doing better.”

“Yeah.”

She pressed a small hand against his shoulder and he sank back into the couch.

“You’re sleeping?”

“Some.”

She threw a leg over his lap and pulled herself over him until she was straddling his thighs. His hands hovered around her, like he wanted to catch her if she fell but was afraid to touch her before then.

“You know me and Brock - you know what we get up to, right?”

“Yeah.”

His face was as pink as the princess’s dress, he felt cursed by fairies.

“Do you want that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want what you’re doing with Jack and Brock?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing with Jack and Brock.”

And that was true. He woke up in bed with them sometimes but whatever they’d done was usually lost in a haze of grief and heat and occasional flashes of slick muscles and bit lips. He knew it felt good, but he couldn’t have really said what he was doing.

She put her little hands on his thick wrists and guided his hands to her hips, slipped his fingers under the loose hem of her shirt.

“You’re sleeping with them.”

“Some.”

“You wanna sleep with me some?”

“I don’t know.”

She pecked his cheek and slid lightly off his lap, snuggling back into his side to watch the movie.

“Well lemme know when you figure it out.”

***

He was in a white tiled room, wearing the coldsuit and strapped to a reinforced medical exam table. He knew it was reinforced because if it hadn’t been he would have torn it apart.

The fly of the suit was open and a tiny, terrifying woman standing next to his handler pulled his soft cock out of the stiff fabric. He was cringing away from them and they hadn’t even shocked him yet.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t” he whined and felt a small, hot hand firm its grip around his slowly thickening member.

“What are you crying for, Princess,” his handler purred, “we’re being nice to you, giving you a treat here. You oughta be grateful.”

“I don’t want it, please, please stop,” he used to be someone who never begged. He wasn’t sure how he knew that. 

“It’s not about what you want,” the little blonde woman said, “it’s about giving you what’s good for you.” She had a handful of something slippery and was working her wrist and he didn’t want it but it felt so good and he was getting harder every stroke.

“Condom,” she said, and his handler put an opened rubber in her palm. She pulled it out of the package and propped Steve’s prick up, rolling the latex down over him. She squeezed once more, hard, at the base then stepped back. 

Steve sighed in relief until he saw that she was just taking her pants off.

“Please, ma’am, please stop, I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re doing this for, but please -”

She put her hand down over his mouth and clambered up onto the table, straddling his hips. He could feel the tip of himself sliding against her and he bit down on a whimper and clenched his eyes shut.

“Pretty boys should be seen and not heard,” she hissed at him, and the fingers not covering his mouth were touching him again, adjusting the angle, getting him in just the right place so that when she started to lower her weight - he jerked against the straps of the table, trying to get away from where she was inevitably sinking onto him, engulfing him, swallowing him whole.

It was hot and wet and slick and he didn’t want it, didn’t want -

“Ooohhh, big boy, pretty boy, are you being good?” She was moaning over him and shifting her hips and he gagged at the sensation. Her hard little hand clamped down more firmly over his mouth.

“Big boy like you gonna puke over a little pussy? I don’t think so, sweetie. Keep being good for me.”

He  _ wanted  _ to puke, wanted to be sick, wanted her off of him, wanted all of them off of him, never wanted anyone to touch him ever agai-

He’d seen her nod but didn’t know what it meant and the wave of cold surprised a shout out of him, opening his mouth and filling it with fingers.

“Christ,” she said, hips bucking “motherfucker, you can feel it cooling him down, holy shit that’s good,” and the body - he didn’t know why there - 

His legs spread - he tried to wiggle them and couldn’t and - oh, oh his handler was there, reaching down to the hidden zipper that opened his uniform all the way and - 

And the little body, the pretty girl on top of him was  _ warm  _ and his handler was reaching under and inside of him and his hand was warm and wet and he nearly wept in confused pleasure why - 

“You were so good, sweetheart,” the handler said, “you’ve been a good boy and you get two rewards, do you understand?”

He didn’t and he tried to shake his head but there was a hand on his mouth, hot little fingers sliding over his tongue, so he just looked at his handler and the woman and took in their heat, filled and filling and wet and warm and safe here, being good for his handler.

***

“I can’t get the transition clean. Unless we start wiping him like the Soldier I think we’re going to be stuck with the intermediate stage.”

Brock was lounging on the large black sofa that took up most of the floor space in the secretary’s office. He was tired and testy. Rogers may have been getting plenty of shuteye but at least once a week Brock was missing out on a night’s sleep in order to have training time. It was worth it, no question. He was never going to whine about the opportunity to watch Cyn make Captain America cry. But still. Brock wasn’t getting any younger. He needed his beauty sleep. 

Pierce didn’t look up from his desk, just rummaged in a drawer until he came up with a cigar and a shiny silver lighter.

“I like the intermediate stage. He’s sweet like that.”

Brock snorted. A tiger would be sweet if it was hopped up on the shots they gave to Rogers before they brought him to the Secretary.

“He’s dangerous like that.”

The Secretary shrugged.

“He’s dangerous all the time. If you don’t like danger you aren’t in the right business.”

Brock had to concede that point. Even dropped as far as they could get him Rogers had taken out two of his less-skilled handlers. 

“I just think it’s a risk. He could kill all of us before we’d even know what happened if he got it into his head to try.”

Pierce smiled.

“And all of our lives are worth less than what he could do for HYDRA,” he puffed away at his cigar, filling the room with silence and smoke. “I want him to meet the Soldier. If they play well together maybe it would be worth it to focus on adding to our assets in that direction, to stage a tragic accident for Captain America and put Rogers in the chair. If not we keep Project Morpheus on the path that it’s already following and use Cap’s reputation to advance our position and get closer to that idiot Stark and all the rest.”

Well, that seemed clear enough. Now Brock just had to make sure that the meeting between the Assets went well.

***

The Kansas op was an unmitigated disaster. 

See, the thing was, this shit is delicate.

Working in the shadows only works so long as nobody shines any inconvenient lights.

And Dr. Tabitha MacKinnon was being pretty fucking inconvenient.

And you only got to work for HYDRA’s research division if you were exceptionally bright.

So Dr. MacKinnon, a little spitfire of a chemist with a grudge against the British monarchy and a hankering for order, was recruited after a decade or so of building fiendishly tricky bombs for the IRA and was safely relocated to a facility where she could play with her beakers, plot her revenge against the Protestants, and stay out of trouble.

In Kansas. 

The trouble was that in the wake of the Battle of New York there was a lot of really exciting work to be done for research chemists of all stripes and suddenly half of MacKinnon’s facility was staffed with straight SHIELD. And the  _ bigger  _ trouble was that some of those motherfuckers brought uncensored, uncontrolled information to a genius terrorist who, zealous fanatic or not, was capable of reading a few reports and putting a few things together and realizing that HYDRA wasn’t exactly going to follow through on letting her drop an incendiary on Buckingham palace before tearfully uniting Eire. 

So the situation was that there was a facility that was halfway full of people who absolutely could not know they were working with HYDRA suddenly locked in with a woman who very much wanted to inform them of that and who was also capable of melting people who looked at her the wrong way into a noxious puddle of goo through the enduring magic of chemistry.

So what they needed was one group to methodically pick off anyone in the building who’d learned about HYDRA before a lockdown was initiated and one group to root out a maniacal liberationist who appeared to have a squirt gun full of something very interesting and very scary that she’d managed to hide from her employers until she used it to start dissolving STRIKE team Bravo one by one. 

So what was happening was that Cyn, Higgins, Westphal, and Murphy were with the Alpha newbies breathlessly “breaking in” to locked rooms to rescue SHIELD agents and the Soldier was carefully and quietly suffocating anyone whose response to being liberated was “Oh, thank god, we’ve got to tell Fury - it’s HYDRA, HYDRA is back!” and staying invisible to anyone who responded with “Oh, thank god, what happened?” while Rollins was with Brock and the Captain; they were counting on Cap’s skin to resist MacKinnon’s chemicals and betting that her security door couldn’t resist Cap.

It was a lot of balls to have in the air, is all. You don’t want to waste perfectly good and potentially flippable scientists but you can’t have people running around willy-nilly screaming about Nazis. The Soldier was so good at what it did that it would look like the victims had died in the tasteful little fires it was setting as they progressed through the facility and that’s the kind of delicate touch you need to preserve an empire. The Captain was at least theoretically hardened against chemical attacks but was so recognizable that they couldn’t risk the slightest possibility that anyone who would live through the day would see him.

So far so good. A lot going on, yeah, the kind of op that gets you a little testy, but so far so good. Brock was sweating but he wasn’t  _ sweating it _ , you know?

But then the Captain got through the door. 

His orders were simple. They had to be, when he was activated. “Break through this door and kill the lady with the goo gun.” 

Easy peasy. 

First part went like a dream.

Then MacKinnon got the goo on the golden boy. 

Granted!

Even then it might have been salvageable. The Captain had been trained to push through pain, to suffer tremendous injury and still complete his mission. 

He fucking obliterated MacKinnon; objective achieved, target eliminated with extreme prejudice and a fist through the ribcage.

The problem was that in about ten seconds half his face had been transformed into something with the approximate odor and texture of rotten foie gras and apparently he was experiencing some emotions about that because he was howling and gibbering and digging his fingers into his ruptured skin and it was dripping off his fingers when he pulled his hand away so the timeline for extraction got moved up a little bit faster than Brock had anticipated. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jack moaned from over a pile of his own lost lunch. 

“Fuck, fuck,” Brock said, “FUCK,” and then he was able to force his poor brain, traumatized by the sight of Rogers’ left eye running down his nose, to remember the hand gesture for Cold Level Three to at least get the supersoldier to stop fucking screaming.

The supersoldier obliged; he stopped screaming and then he dropped like a rock. 

“Fucking, fuck,” Brock said.

Rogers was immobile and shivering. He wasn’t screaming but a wet slurping sound paired with a high whine every time he inhaled through his dissolved lips.

“Fucking abort, Cyn we need the Soldier, we’re going to have to burn everything you haven’t cleared yet,” Brock didn’t know if Rogers could be made  _ more  _ unconscious with another cold zap but he did know he didn’t want his balls in a vice for testing level four in the field instead of in a controlled environment.

“Negative, Commander,” Cynthia’s calm voice came from the radio. “We’re almost done here, two more rooms and we’re clear, we can do this.”

“If you can do it without the Soldier do it, but send it to my location doubletime; the secondary Asset is down and he’s too fucking heavy for me and Rollins to extract alone.”

“He’s  _ down _ ?!” 

Good, all the calm had fled Cyn’s voice. She was getting with the program. 

“Soldier en route. Your exfil will be in parking bay C in two minutes.”

And even then,  _ even then _ , it might have been a decent op. Brock, Jack, and the Soldier limped Rogers’ twitching ass to the parking bay and found an empty Quinjet waiting for them. Jack dove behind the yoke and put his skills as a Navy pilot to good use. Cyn and the rest of Alpha team cleared the last two rooms without resorting to setting the whole complex on fire. Rogers’ face stopped melting and started healing - that terrible drool-cry sound tapered away to heavy breathing and the limp pouch of his empty eyelid started to plump up.

They were so, so close to things going well.

And then the Soldier recognized the Captain.

Since Brock was alone in the cargo bay with both assets, and since he was studiously not looking too carefully at the runny wreck of Rogers’ face by making determined eye contact with the toes of his boots, and since the Winter Soldier was always eerily silent he didn’t notice at first that it had frozen in place.

It couldn’t have been more than two minutes. Well. Maybe five minutes  _ at most _ , before Brock realized that something was. Off.

Not wrong yet, no. But. 

Off.

The Soldier stared into space a lot. It stared at walls, it stared at its fingers and its boots. It didn’t stare at people.

It had been ordered not to stare at people because when it did it was exceptionally fucking creepy.

It was staring at Rogers and, with the mask and goggles in place, it was exceptionally fucking creepy.

“Soldier,” Brock grunted, exhausted by his long day of nightmarish visuals, “eyes down.”

The Soldier didn’t listen. It took off its goggles.

To Brock’s credit the first thing he did was drop his hand to the grip of his handgun and unsnap the retaining strap on his holster.

“Soldier. Eyes down. That’s an order.”

The Soldier wasn’t supposed to be able to remove its muzzle. Its left hand cracked it open and it fell away from its face in pieces. It sniffed at the air.

“Soldier -” Brock hesitated. He didn’t want to die today. But he was curious.

He had been a little kid who loved adventure stories and war stories and snipers. 

Everybody loved Cap. They had pictures of him everywhere, they showed him on TV and reproduced his posters. There was a whole chapter of him in every US high school history book.

And in most of those chapters there was probably only one tiny, grainy photo of Cap’s sidekick from the old neighborhood. Somebody with a silly, old-timey name. Buster or Barty or something, that sad guy who fell off the train saving Cap’s life. Who was he? The one Howling Commando to die in the war. 

He wasn’t a hero people remembered. He was a Trivial Pursuit answer. 

Brock was the only person he knew who had done his whole senior project on the short and tragic life of Bucky Barnes.

Bucky Barnes. Who had been wiped no more than eighteen hours ago and who was staring out of the Soldier’s dull eyes to take a good, long look at Steve Rogers.

The Soldier knew him.

It  _ knew  _ him.

Rogers’ face was mostly back together now. His skin was shiny and taut and raw-looking but it was whole. There was no telling if his eye was healed until he opened it, but it wasn’t a horrible purple gape anymore. His lips were pink and full and looked just slightly bruised.

The Soldier reached out a hand toward him.

“Soldier, turn and face the wall.”

It leaned over and ran its fingers through the sweaty blonde hair.

“Steve,” it whispered. 

“Forgiveness,” Brock said, and wrote the whole damn day off as a loss.

***

Brock was pretty sure he still had some melted Cap-face on his tac vest when he dropped bonelessly into Pierce’s expensive, cigar-stinking couch.

He’d sent Cyn and Jack home ahead of him and had made sure Rogers was in the infirmary and doped up on enough sedatives to drop a rhino. He’d filed the paperwork for an early wipe for the Soldier. It was in his hand, waiting for Pierce’s order.

“What, exactly, do you think you’re trying to prove here, Commander,” the Secretary hissed as he read over a copy of the request for wipe. “Are you trying to cover up some illicit playtime in that jet because I’ll have you know the videos are -”

Brock, perhaps suicidally, interrupted Pierce. 

“I’ve got the forms asking to destroy those too,” he held up another sheet of paper. “Sir. The Soldier recognized Rogers. Took off its muzzle and goggles against direct orders, petted his hair, and said ‘Steve.’ If I hadn’t triggered it they’d be staring longingly into each other’s eyes and skipping into the sunset wearing my guts on the soles of their boots.”

Pierce had gone an awful, curdled off-white.

“Did Rogers -”

“Rogers didn’t do shit. He was unconscious the whole time and I think we’re pretty lucky that’s true.”

Pierce huffed and stabbed his cigar into the heavy crystal ashtray on the desk.

“You know who the Soldier was.”

“Yessir.”

“Do the others?”

“I don’t know, sir. Probably not. Most of the squad has never seen him with his kit off.”

The Secretary let his fingers play over the sparkling crystal before he picked it up and heaved it violently at the wall next to Brock. 

He never even flinched, too glad to have lived this far into the day to worry about a little shattered glass.

“Well,” Pierce said, forcing his voice into a smooth, controlled tone as he dusted off his hands and pretended nothing had happened. “Where do we go from here?”

Brock set the unsigned orders on the table in front of him. 

“Wipe the Soldier, destroy the tapes. And keep them apart.”

“Goddamnit.”

“It’s too much of a risk for -”

“God _ damnit _ , don’t you think I know that? Put the Soldier back on ice after it’s wiped and keep working with Rogers.”

***

He woke, ravenous and languid, and stretched his smooth, strong limbs in the midmorning sun.

His eyes sparkled, clear and blue. His pink mouth lifted in a smile. 

He didn’t ask what day it was; their first trial run over 36 hours and he just leaned into the palm pressed against his cheek and looked up through long lashes.

Brock had sometimes thought of the Soldier as a monster. The older Asset had thick straps of muscle twisting its frame, ugly scars scrawled across its skin and wove it together in the blood-metal join of the arm. Its hair was lank and its eyes were empty.

He’d thought the Soldier was the monster.

But he felt the soft, wet warmth of Rogers’ tongue on his palm and couldn’t see bone rotting beneath his bright hair, couldn’t feel skin oozing away as he pressed a thumb past his teeth.

The Soldier was frightening.

This, though. 

Unmarked, undying, Rogers was something awful. 

Brock was willing to bet he could turn him into something worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter:
> 
> Animal death - two dogs are shot, one while sedated. There is a passing mention of one dog lapping up the other dog’s blood.   
> Wetting - in this chapter a character urinates on himself in an instance of nonsexual incontinence in response to pain  
> Beyond Canon Levels of Gore - Steve gets sprayed with a chemical that melts his face. He heals because of the serum, but his face is melted for a while and it is gross.
> 
> Series Announcement:  
> Hello naughty readers there is going to be more of this garbage.   
> As of now _Nothing Fades Like the Light_ is part of a series so if you want updates as the story continues past this fic please subscribe to the series.  
> This is important because the SERIES is going to have an eventual happy ending but this particular part of it is, at best, bittersweet. 
> 
> I promise. I PROMISE. I know I just melted Steve's face but eventually there will be hot cocoa and cuddling on the couch.


	6. Blackened Houses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to Deus3xMachina for beta-ing
> 
> No special warnings this chapter but *party hat* this is the 1-year anniversary of me creating this account so happy anniversary to me.
> 
> This week also marks this account going over 100k words so extra party hats!
> 
> Thanks you all so much for reading.

Steve fell into an easy rhythm. He spent his days training with SHIELD and running missions with STRIKE when they came up, he spent his nights and weekends with Jack, Brock, and Cynthia, slowly learning about the new world around him and quickly about these people who took care of him. 

He could survive on his own, feed himself and spit vitriol and glare his way through the days fuelled by spite. But he shouldn’t have to.

It took him a while to warm up to trusting them. Even after Jack brought him into his home and Cynthia cried on his shoulder when her cat died and Brock whispered, “God, oh God, Sweetheart,” into the back of his neck it was hard to believe they wanted him instead of Captain America.

Ever since there were the two of them to choose between, nobody  _ had  _ chosen Steve.

Nobody who lived, anyway.

So he trained and he built a home and he stored up little morsels of proof. 

Cynthia wrinkled her nose at the gaudy uniform but smiled when she took him shopping and dressed him up in colors she said suited him. 

Jack found him sitting up at night, sleepless and brittle, and brought out a chessboard. He’d made them each a cup of flowery tea and didn’t pressure Steve to talk, just moved pieces around and offered the comfort of his presence.

Brock asked him to draw.

And, God, hadn’t that hurt at first.

Brock had seen the notebook he’d pilfered from the New York office and had seen the bitter sketches, jagged and sore, cluttering up its pages. He’d gone out on a Sunday morning and come back with a big, empty book of vellum pages and a handful of pens and an exquisite little watercolor set. 

Steve had choked and recoiled and Brock had caught his hands, kissed his palm and curled the fingers over his cheek.

“I know all you see is him. I know he’s all you want and it comes out on the paper. It’s okay, Steve. It’s okay to want him. To miss him.”

Steve shook his head and tried to pull his hand back gently. Brock wasn’t going to let it go without a fight.

“I’m afraid if I start drawing him I’ll never stop,” he whispered. There was more to it, of course, but he kept that back. Didn’t mention the way he knew a little less about Bucky every day he moved a little farther away from him. Didn’t mention that he was scared to forget. 

“So don’t draw him. Draw something else. We’ll go to the park, or the Natural History museum. You can draw the tigers or the cavemen or the whale skeleton.”

Steve just shook his head again.

“Then we can stay here. Draw me. I’m like a caveman,” Brock had smiled shyly and it was that vulnerability that made up his mind.

So it hurt.

So what if it hurt - if Brock could let down his guard to offer a hand to Steve then Steve could damn well meet him in the middle. 

So Steve had kissed him and set the pad on his knee. He sketched an outline and began to fill in the details - Brock relaxed and debauched, sinew in sheets glowing with summer sun. 

And it hurt.

And it was another little sliver of evidence.

Brock wanted him, Brock cared about him, Brock was willing to hold still and breathe lightly and expose this shy, trembling part of himself for  _ Steve _ , not Captain America.

The days poured over him like honey and pulled like taffy, he was sweet and stretched and dizzy.

***

When things went bad they went bad quickly.

One minute STRIKE had been heading back to the jet, maybe somewhat bruised but in good spirits at the conclusion of a successful mission.

The next minute the world was red and gold and exploding around them. 

Steve dove in front of Cynthia, raising his shield just in time to deflect a whirring chunk of shrapnel from pulverizing her leg, and kept rolling in pursuit of the loud-mouthed blur that was raining hellfire on his team.

"What does that idiot think he's doing," Brock's voice howled over the comms, "Stark! Stark, cease fire, we're friendlies!"

Steve was bounding after the contrails the suit left in its wake, trying to catch up before Tony went supersonic and came around for another pass but he was immediately knocked into a tumble by a silver battering ram with rocket boots. 

"Oh  _ shit _ . Cap, get outta there, you've got four more ironmen headed your way," Brock sounded shaky and tense, "somebody take those things out, Christ, Steve,  _ move _ !"

Steve moved, picking himself up and vaulting over an upturned Jeep as the whine of approaching repulsors got closer.

Things had been going well for his first mission with any Avengers backing him up - Clint, Natasha, and Tony had joined STRIKE Alpha and Delta in subduing a bunch of freakishly mutated animals on a compound in rural Oregon.

The freakishly mutated animals had been subdued, the ranting maniac who had mutated the animals had been arrested, the ranting maniac's henchmen had been rounded up into a bus to sleep off his mind control drugs - all in all a good day's work.

And now this. 

The upturned Jeep that Steve was hiding behind rocked as it was fired on from two angles and he braced his shoulder against the axle to hold it in place.

"Stark! Tony! Cease fire, cease fire!"

Steve's earpiece crackled with static and, finally, thankfully, Tony's voice. 

"Chin up, Buttercup, I'm sitting in a plane wishing for a martini, I'm not firing on anyone."

The Jeep rocked under another barrage of repulsor blasts; Steve picked it up and flung it at the two ironmen alternating shots at the now-melted roof and took off running as he caught sight of another, this one silver and crimson, starting a steep dive toward him. He was starting to think maybe they had something against him in particular. 

"If it's not you then I regret to inform you that you've been robbed because there are five suits trying to turn me into a crater and they're doing a pretty good job of it!"

The diving suit was catching up quick - as it got closer Steve threw himself into a somersault and sprang up heels-first, landing a kick in its chest hard enough to knock it into an uncontrolled spin, making it crash into the soggy ground. Steve bounced up and sprinted in as fast as he could away from the team, confirming his suspicion when he heard the other four suits pivot and give chase. 

"Shit, Clint, turn the plane around. We're on our way, Spangles."

"You  _ left _ ," Brock roared, "you took the quinjet and your armor and our sniper and you left before extraction was complete? What is wrong with you, you self- centered-"

"It was my call," Natasha's calm, low voice came through Steve's earpiece, "ETA two minutes."

"When did you even-"

Brock's indignation was cut off by a minor explosion as a blue and copper suit launched a rocket that Steve barely avoided.

"Can we focus for a second here," he shouted, using the shield to deflect a repulsor blast from the red and gold suit away from himself and into the silver suit, tearing off its arm and making the white glow of its eyes go dark. One down. 

"Hang on for just a minute and I've got an EMP that'll take them out," Tony's voice warred with wind on the transmission - he must have left the quinjet.

Steve grunted with the effort of deflecting another blast and some of the energy made it around the shield, burning agonizingly through his suit and into his shoulder. 

"They're converging on me, I'll keep them busy," Steve said, right as a gunmetal suit launched itself at him and wrapped its arms around his waist in a tackle. 

It took him to the ground, knocking the shield aside, and Steve grappled with it, wrenching himself on top of the thing and driving an elbow hard into the breastplate, shattering the arc reactor powering it. 

"They're too close, Cap, we can't get a clean shot," Cynthia reported.

Steve stood up shakily and got ready to run but before he could take a step the blue and copper suit had a hold of his arm and was bringing a foot down on the side of Steve's knee until the joint collapsed with a horrible crunching pop. 

Steve screamed and tried to jerk away but the crimson and silver suit wrapped its hands around his left arm and he was pinned between the two of them. 

"On my way, on my way, on my way," Tony chanted while the red and gold suit stalked toward Steve.

"Fire it now," Brock growled. 

"I can't, it'll knock out both jets and my suit if I'm trying to take them out from here."

The red and gold suit stood in front of Steve while he panted and hung between the other two suits. He gathered himself, letting the attackers take his weight as he kicked out with his good leg. 

The red and gold suit smoothly batted his kick aside then drew back its arm and slapped him backhanded across the face.

Steve felt dreamy and far away when the suit slid its cold metal thumbs over his cheekbones and under his mask, peeling the cowl away like a scab and tossing it aside. He could feel blood running down his chin from a split lip. He tried to speak but his mouth was full of blood. 

The suit took his face in its hands, strong fingers wrapping around Steve's skull, broad palms covering his ears. 

The whine of the repulsors changed in pitch and urgency, getting louder and gathering power with Steve's skull between them. 

He closed his eyes. He didn't want to see what was coming. 

The whine from the suit's hands became unbearable, piercing and overwhelming until Steve was screaming to match it - he couldn't tell if he was still hearing it or feeling it resonate through the bones of his skull but it didn't matter, all that mattered was that it had to  _ stop _ , God, it was going to kill him if it didn't  _ stop _ -

The suit released him and he fell in a heap, immediately opening his eyes and scrambling away from it. The copper and silver suits were on the ground but the red and gold suit still loomed over him. 

It chased him, landing on top of him and straddling his chest while its hands reached for his ears again. 

He cringed away from it and brought his arms up to cover his face, a last-ditch effort that was all his hurt, trapped body could manage. 

The suit on top of him froze, then stood and backed away, hands at its sides, not pointed at Steve.

One of those hands made a complicated gesture and the faceplate opened up. 

Tony. 

Tony's mouth was moving and his eyes looked wide and scared. His red and gold suit matched the red and gold suit that was puddled on the ground behind him with its eyes dark. 

Steve let himself collapse a little bit.

Tony's mouth was still moving and Steve was slightly troubled that he couldn't hear the words coming out of it but he'd worry about that later. 

More of Tony's suit was folding itself away from his body until the billionaire was wearing a skintight black shirt and a gaudy, clanky pair of pants.

He produced a cellphone from somewhere and pointed it at Steve, then approached and very gently turned his head from side to side with the phone still aimed at him. 

Stark turned the device around so that Steve could see the screen. 

It was a photo of him looking like hammered shit. Presumably the pertinent part of the image was the mass of blisters on either side of his face and the charred electronics burned into his ears. 

Apparently his earpieces hadn't gotten ripped aside with the cowl. 

Steve nodded and Stark took the horrible picture away and for that he was grateful. 

Stark pointed to Steve then pointed to himself and mimed rocking a baby.

Probably he wanted to carry Steve to the rest of the team. 

Steve looked around and didn't recognize any of the surrounding terrain - he apparently had done a decent job of trying to put some distance between the rogue suits and STRIKE.

He nodded and tried not to flinch when Tony's suit covered his face again. 

He was careful and moved slowly, scooping Steve off the ground with minimal jostling to his damaged knee.

The extraction point was in chaos. STRIKE Delta had completed exfil with Natasha, Clint, and Tony and it looked like every member of both teams was involved in a shouting match. 

Steve couldn't hear what was going on but he could guess. Alpha was pissed that they'd been left with nobody on their six in the midst of a technically still active mission; Delta had injured members who needed to stabilize and there was no reason to stay after the threat had been neutralized. Both of them were right and Steve didn't want to deal with them fighting. Luckily he didn't have to. 

When Steve and Tony landed Brock gave up on yelling at everyone else and whirled around to start yelling at them. 

Steve shrugged and tapped his injured ear and pointed Tony to one of the quinjets.

Brock's face turned puce and he barked something at the assembled fighters that had most of them headed to the other jet. The Avengers, Rumlow, Rollins, and Cynthia joined Steve. 

Clint slapped his shoulder companionably as he passed, pointing at his own ears and shrugging before giving a thumbs up. Steve didn't know what that meant so he just nodded. Tony and Jack joined Clint in the cockpit while Cynthia, Brock, and Natasha scrutinized Steve.

"What'd I do now?"

Natasha cracked a smile but Cynthia's frown deepened and she shot a dirty look at the other woman. She held up a first aid kit and raised her eyebrows inquiringly. 

"Okay," Steve said, and sat still. 

Cynthia removed a pair of tweezers from the kit and carefully positioned Steve's head until she could easily angle the instrument and begin plucking the charred comms out of Steve's skull.

It didn't hurt but it felt very strange not to hear the little motions of metal and plastic so close to his ear. Cynthia was plucking out a piece at a time and dropping them into a cup she held at her knee. 

Nobody needed him for this. Steve shut his eyes and checked out, feeling the little touches to his face only distantly and moving when he was directed to do so. 

Eventually she finished with the tweezers and switched to rubbing some kind of cool gel into his face. Then she was pulling at the top of his suit and strong little scissors were snipping the rugged fabric away from the burn on his shoulder. That got some of the nice gel too. 

When Cynthia's hands went to Steve's knee his eyes popped open and he tensed up. 

"No," he said, calmly but firmly, and pushed Cynthia's hands away. 

She frowned at him and spoke at him and he didn't hear her. It was beginning to irritate him. 

"I don't know what you're saying, but you don't have what you'd need to fix my knee in your little kit."

Cynthia held up an elastic bandage and Brock's mouth moved. Stark leaned out of the cockpit and said something with a smirk, which made Brock start yelling again. 

Natasha was frowning at him, but hadn't yelled yet so he spoke to her. 

"I'm gonna heal better if I eat something. Do you have anything?"

She nodded and opened a cabinet, passing over a handful of candy bars. 

Brock scoffed and rolled his eyes and dug one of the special protein bars out of his oversized pockets and slapped it into Steve's hand. It was warm from being close to his skin. 

"Thank you," Steve said, and began to see if there was a way to politely swallow the food whole like a snake. 

He choked it down and closed his eyes and leaned his head on the back of his seat, content to ride back to New York or DC or someplace that at least didn't have so many goddamned trees in blessed silence. 

***

Steve's hearing improved gradually, but he was sure it was back over Kansas.

" - it's not just that you left him behind today, you left him behind after the Chitauri and if you hadn't needed a tank today you never would have come back for him." Brock must have yelled himself into exhaustion because that was Rollins' angry voice.

"C'mon, Leatherface," Stark said, "he's a big boy, he knows we're around if he needs someone to do shots and soul searching with."

"Oh yeah? Around where?"

"New York? Manhattan? The 21st century? I was being rhetorical. What I mean is he knows we're just a cab ride away."

"I will personally give you a thousand dollars if you can guess what month he moved out of New York."

The quiet got ugly. 

"May," Natasha said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. "Less than a week after the Chitauri."

"Oh so you do care," Cynthia sneered. "Thanks so much for coming by the housewarming party. You did a really great job of making Steve feel welcome in this new city. And century. I know he felt so supported by the Avengers when a teammate died on his first real mission."

"And beside all of that it was your stupid AI suits that went haywire and nearly fried him out there," Brock's voice  _ did  _ sound a little scratchy and yelled-out. "You'd think you'd have learned something the last time your suits went crazy and blew up your own expo but I guess -"

"We still don't know why the suits attacked him and we should focus on that before we worry whether enough people are holding Cap's hand and helping him take baby steps into the big scary future - if you'd been willing to stop in Malibu like I asked -"

"If you're all bickering back here, who's flying the plane," Steve asked, giving up his charade and opening his eyes.

"Me! Bickering's not my strong suit," Clint called from the cockpit. 

"Neither is flying the plane," Jack grumbled. 

"Hey, red and white and black and blue, welcome back to the land of the living. How's the leg," Stark had stowed the suit somewhere and managed to change into a pair of tattered jeans and an obnoxious tee that appeared to have Steve's face on it. 

"It hurts. What's this about your suits destroying your expo?"

"Nothing, not a thing, just a teeny tiny little speedbump, ancient history getting the kinks ironed out - hah, ironed - and other than the Mark II, which I shouldn't have to explain is severely outdated technology and which in this instance wasn't even programmed by me, they weren't even my suits - well, some things happened and there was a guy with a grudge and Rhodey only temporarily ended up kidnapped by the suit but long story short, yes, it is at least theoretically possible to hijack and control older models of the armor with known bugs but those five suits were prototypes from my Malibu workshop and shouldn't have even been able to power up without supervision, let alone work in sync to turn you into a smoking hole in the ground."

Steve glared flatly at Stark before shifting his mute stare to Natasha.

"Tony is very sorry that you got hurt by his suits. He's not sure how it happened and wants to find out as soon as possible," she translated. 

He nodded. 

"Why didn't you talk to me after I moved?"

Natasha shrugged. 

"You didn't seem very interested in telling us where you were going, I didn't want to force you to tell us. Clint and I split time between missions and home and DC. We've seen you training with STRIKE. You seemed to be doing fine."

"And you didn't think to come say hi to someone you knew had no other friends when he left the only city he'd ever lived in," Cynthia snapped. 

"I didn't realize we were friends," Natasha said.

Steve was a grown man. He'd fought in a war, he'd lost people he cared about, he'd been terribly injured and recovered, he'd been frozen and brought back to life. He wasn't sure why that bland statement hurt so much.

Jack made a disgusted noise and stood up.

"That does it. I'm rerouting us to DC. You people can fly to New York and do your investigation or analysis or whatever after we take Steve home. We can debrief at the Triskelion tomorrow instead of in your tower with your suits tonight."

"Look, Scarface-"

"Don't call him that." Steve's voice was heavy and cold. 

Stark rolled his eyes and opened his mouth. 

"It's not like that, it's from a movie-"

"I don't care if it is, Shortstack. You'd think that being such a Poindexter woulda taught you it's rude to call people names."

"Okay, Freezerburn, I get it, I'm an asshole, but we need to-"

"I don't need to do shit. Jack is right. I'm tired, I got my ass kicked twice today, and you can show up to debrief tomorrow or you can piss into the wind, I don't care. I just want to go home."

Stark opened his mouth to argue again but Natasha spoke first. 

"Okay, Steve. Get some rest, take care of your leg, and we'll see you in the morning." Her hand locked on to Tony's arm and she hauled him toward the cockpit. "Everyone did good work today. Feel better, we'll talk tomorrow."

And with that the jet descended back into silence and Steve closed his eyes again.

***

“That could’ve gone better,” Natasha settled into the co-pilot’s chair while Clint lifted them off the roof of the Triskelion. 

“I don’t see how,” Tony grumbled. “We’re winning friends and influencing people; Capsicle got to introduce us to his lovely new goon squad and we got a sanctimonious little lecture. Isn’t that how it’s done? I’m not sure, I’m used to buying friends.”

Natasha rubbed her eyes.

“Steve’s squad may be goons but they’re right. They were there for him, we weren’t.”

“In case you didn’t notice it’s not like we’ve had time to be anywhere for anyone. There was a tower and, I don’t know, most of New York to rebuild. Aliens happened. And for-real aliens, not sexy blondes in leather armor. A lot has been going on.  _ Science  _ has been going on.”

Clint frowned and banked, aiming the nose of the quinjet north.

“Tower’s been fixed for months. Bruce left five weeks ago. Nat and I have been doing paperwork and you’ve been kicking your heels. We could’ve called him. Should’ve called him.”

Tony rolled his eyes and pulled his StarkPhone out of his pocket to begin rapidly typing away with his thumbs. 

“He’s a big boy! He can pick up a phone if he wants to get pizza.”

“Does he know how to?”

Stark paused and frowned.

“If his new crew hasn’t taught him how to use a cellphone they’re shitty friends.”

Natasha hummed.

“Shitty friends are better than nobody.”

***

“That couldn’t have gone better,” Brock’s ass was wearing a groove in Pierce’s couch while Jack distracted Steve in the gym showers.

“Zola got the suits wrangled, then?” Pierce shut the lid of his laptop and focused all his attention on Brock.

“Like a dream. It’ll probably only work once, given that Stark was already killing backdoors and hardening encryption before we were back on the jet, but once was enough. Rogers was perfect.”

“Good. You’re having him meet with them here tomorrow?”

“Conference room three, if you want to watch the fun.”

Pierce smiled.

“I might, at that. He was injured today?”

Brock felt the easy grin on his face get a little brittle.

“Yeah. They knocked him around pretty good. His knee is still a mess.”

“And he’s in the building right now?”

Brock sighed. He felt his evening plans of slipping into Rogers slipping out of his grasp.

“In the showers.”

“Trigger him and put him in the suit. It’s about time I met our new asset properly.”

***

The pain in Princess’s leg wasn’t like the other pain he knew. It wasn’t sharp and buzzing, it wasn’t cold. It was a long, tearing throb and the novelty of it was distracting him from his task.

A hand threaded its way into his hair and wrenched his head into a more correct position and he re-focused enough to swallow around the cock in his mouth.

“Stupid thing, isn’t he?”

The man in his mouth waved a hand over his shoulder and he felt a jolt of cold on his chest, warning him. He swallowed again and took the man deeper, wanting his warmth to stave off the cold. 

“Stupid has its uses. He’s a lot easier to work with than the Soldier, that’s for sure.”

His handler was praising him. He was being good. He was easy. 

The man in his mouth held his face, sweeping soft fingers over his cheekbones. The man hummed, drew back his foot, and kicked Princess’s throbbing knee. He whined and cringed and sucked harder. Being good was good. Being good made the pain stop. 

“Sir, unstructured pain is detrimental to the Asset’s function.”

“Commander, you’re well aware that order comes through pain.”

His handler shifted uncomfortably and Princess flexed his fists. Another pulse of cold moved through him. 

“Asset, be good. Make the Secretary feel good.”

Princess knew how to do that. He let his mouth get wetter and pushed his face down over the Secretary’s cock, only stopping when his nose brushed the man’s soft stomach. He alternated between swallowing, undulating his tongue, and humming low in his throat until the man in his mouth was clutching at his hair again and using that as a handle to hold his head still. Princess relaxed his jaw and let his tongue become soft and inviting as the cock in his mouth thrust a few times, then twitched, then jerked and filled his mouth with bitterness and warmth. 

He stayed on his knees, shifting his weight to the one that didn’t hurt, while the Secretary pulled away to speak to his handler. He kept his head down and there wasn’t any more cold or any pain beside the residual, slowly fading ache in his leg. The Secretary left and his handler came back to stand beside him and gently stroke his hair, a warm touch he knew he was allowed to nuzzle into.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, Princess.”

***

Tony was pacing in front of a whiteboard and flinging up blue light from his hands.

Steve had a headache.

The suits must have hit harder than he’d thought because he’d passed out in the showers and woke up in the infirmary only three hours before he was supposed to meet with the other Avengers for debrief. He’d had a large white bandage wrapped around his still-throbbing knee and Jack awkwardly asleep in a chair next to his hospital bed.

It made him smile in a way that not much could to wake up to someone caring that he was hurt.

Jack fussed at him and helped with the pants as he pulled on some spare STRIKE tactical gear for the meeting but he let Steve walk to the conference room on his own two feet.

Jack, with his hulking frame and his handsome, scarred face, knew something about the importance of appearances. 

Natasha and Clint came in with a pretty blonde woman. Fury came in with a pretty brunette. Tony came in with a hangover. 

The pretty blonde woman and the pretty brunette woman seemed to be the kind of hypercompetent, no-nonsense experts Cynthia had taught him to expect in the future. They certainly seemed to be keeping up with Stark’s rambling and his flashing diagrams better than Steve was. Periodically one would ask a question that would make Tony pause in his monologue and then go rabbiting off on a whole other topic but Steve could barely parse the questions they asked.

His head hurt. He felt dizzy. 

The pretty brunette said something about encryption that he couldn’t follow, Tony threw more light at the whiteboard.

“Steve?”

He couldn’t tell if the little blue-green glyphs were supposed to be moving. He just tried to look like he was paying attention.

“Steve, are you okay?”

It was quiet in the room. Natasha was looking at him pretty intently. 

“Steve?” 

He saw her lips say his name and it took a second to connect the sound to himself.

“Yeah. Yeah, yes. What?”

That - that probably wasn’t the right way to answer given that now everybody was looking at him pretty intently.

“Steve, are you okay?”

He squinted his eyes shut and rubbed a hand over his face.

“’m fine. Headache.”

“Do you normally get headaches, big guy?”

Clint looked a little concerned. That was nice.

“Not really,” Steve said, and Rollins put a hand on his shoulder.

“He spent the night in the infirmary. Torn ACL and a severe concussion.”

Oh. Oh, he hadn’t known that. Had he?

“Did you already tell me that,” he asked.

“A couple times, bud.”

Tony scoffed.

“What is he even doing here, then? If this isn’t going to be a proper debrief it’s a waste of time.”

“Tony, Christ,” Clint said and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Rollins shrugged.

“I tried to get him to stay in bed. He just said he didn’t want to let any of you down.”

Steve’s head hurt.

His head hurt and his leg hurt and he didn’t think he liked the way any of these strangers was looking at him.

“Jack, I think I messed up. I think I’ve gotta go home.”

***

Brock met them in the garage and Jack hauled the unconscious supersoldier into the back seat of their SUV, sliding in next to him and rucking down Cap’s pants as soon as the door was closed. He put on a pair of blue medical gloves and carefully peeled the dermal sedative patch off Rogers’ hip before wrapping it in both of the gloves he stripped off over it and tucking it into a thick plastic baggie so there was no chance of him or Brock touching the drugged adhesive.

He used an alcohol prep pad to scrub the residue off Rogers’ skin then buttoned him up again and arranged him so that he was leaning with his head cushioned on Jack’s shoulder.

“I give it three weeks before Stark tries to buy him an apology car and a month before Romanoff starts trying to casually spar with him,” Jack said.

Brock cackled.

“And Steve?”

Jack smiled and kissed the top of the blonde’s head as he slept.

“Are you kidding? They were mean to me. Called me names. He’ll never forgive them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading.
> 
> I adore all varieties of comments and I love you.
> 
> Once again, this work is now part of a series and the series will have an eventual happy ending but this work is going to be ambiguously happy at best so if you NEED that happy ending to get through it I'd recommend subscribing to the series instead of just this fic.
> 
> Also shit's gonna get REAL in the next few chapters so. Approach with caution and please take care of yourselves.


	7. Time Goes By

_ August 2012 _

The red challenger arrives in their driveway in the middle of the night, tied up with an enormous blue and white bow.

The note on the dash says it’s a belated birthday present.

Steve rolls his eyes and calls Tony and says thank you but he doesn’t have a driver’s license and their house doesn’t have the room to store a third car but he appreciates the gesture and yeah maybe they should hang out sometime, that would be nice. Thanks again, it was very thoughtful but, yeah, really, the HOA can be a bear about parking in the driveway. Great, okay, thanks, maybe we’ll grab pizza sometime or something yeah? Okay. Okay. Talk to you later, Tony.

***

Memo: Handling protocols for dual-asset missions   
11/2/2012

Assets Morpheus and Winter were successfully deployed on a two-day mission to Honduras, targets were eliminated and Assets showed fluidity and creativity working together, more than is typically observed in Asset Morpheus when directed by handlers. 

Asset M. was deployed with a modified cowl and a spare muzzle from Asset W. 

While both assets performed admirably in-field Asset W. became aggressive and unresponsive to orders in transit. It cornered Asset M. and removed the Asset’s cowl. Asset W. was subdued through the use of a trigger word and Asset M.’s wounds healed while under the supervision of a handler. 

Based on eyewitness reports it is strongly recommended that future dual-asset missions employ tinted goggles to obscure Asset M’s eyes.

***

_ December 2012 _

Steve sits in the SHIELD cafeteria beside Natasha and Clint and they watch Tony take on the world by himself. There are probably things that could be said, but nothing that they have to say to each other.

_ March 2013 _

Brock wakes him up at dawn by dragging his tongue over Steve’s cock and from daylight to midnight he’s passed back and forth between Jack and Brock and fucked so hard and so thoroughly that he doesn’t even realize what the date was until two days later on the twelfth. He doesn’t know if he wants to cry because he hates himself for forgetting or or if he wants to cry in gratitude that these two men who had no reason to bother took such good care of him.

***

Memo: RE: Handling protocols for dual-asset missions   
4/7/2013

Assets Morpheus and Winter were deployed to the ongoing BP project in the Gulf of Mexico. Asset W. critically failed mission readiness before disembarking their transport. 

Asset W. ignored repeated, active orders from handlers in order to examine Asset M.’s face.

Asset M. was deployed for this action in a modified cowl and tinted goggles per the previous memo on this subject but was not provided a muzzle due to communication concerns. 

Asset W. was corrected through the use of trigger words; Asset M. completed the mission with direct handler supervision and minimal incident.

It is strongly recommended that future dual-asset missions are delayed until Asset M.’s eyes and mouth are concealed from Asset W.

***

_ May 2013 _

At Jack’s urging Steve calls Stark to wish him a happy birthday and ask if he’d like to get pizza. Tony accepts and talks a mile a minute the whole time. 

_ July 2013 _

Steve wakes up on his birthday to find a large red, white, and blue bow in his driveway, conspicuously missing a car. There is a letter attached to the bow with directions to a private track and garage where a collection of very nice muscle cars and beautiful, almost insectoid bikes, are available to Steve though they remain Stark property and don’t technically belong to him so he can’t technically refuse them. It’s. Sweet. In a very Tony way.

  
  


***

Memo: Emotional access through manipulating known vulnerabilities

7/8/2013

Developing trust among the various actors of the Avengers Initiative is no small task. Agent Romanova can only be considered a liability and the long-term impacts of mind control on Agent Barton are an unknown variable.

Tony Stark, while volatile and non-local, offers the best prospect of a firm ‘in’ for access to sensitive information and plans. 

Asset M. is, even untriggered, incapable of subterfuge but through handler suggestions has been used as a tool to leverage Stark for access. 

Handler disapproval is translated as distance and coldness; Asset responds to handler instructions for contact and warmth, Stark responds with effusive attention and invitations to spend time in his lab. 

A continued program of hot and cold contact is recommended, with more praise and positive contact than negative contact or disapproval over time. 

See: Neil Strauss   
See:  _ The Rules of the Game _   
See: “Negging”

Because of the problematic presence of Stark’s AI analog surveillance tools are recommended and Asset M.’s favored casual clothing has been fitted with microfilm cameras that can be primed for use before visits to Stark Tower. 

Above all it is crucial that Asset M. is seen as reliable and accessible to the Avengers Initiative in order to monitor any potential threats to Project Insight.

***

_ September 2013 _

Brock and Jack watch as Steve eats Cynthia out for hours, Brock periodically issuing instructions, Jack occasionally shutting him up with his dick. 

It’s so good it makes him crazy, makes him hard and empty and lost.

It’s good, fuck, yeah - like - Jesus, Cyn, let the man breathe -

Your face is all, wet, honey, you taste like her. You wanna bet your ass feels better than her pussy?

Christ, you’re a big boy, aren’t you? Don’t worry about me, you took care of me, just let him move you,  _ fuck _ , oh fuck Steve,  _ Steve _ , fuck - 

It’s so good it’s almost like he wanted it.

_ October 2013 _

Halloween is different in the future. More drunk twentysomethings and less candy.

Steve thinks he preferred the candy.

They surprise him with a group costume - tell him not to worry, they’ve got him covered. He shows up to the after-office office party in the stealth suit and - yeah, that’s a surprise.

They’re dressed up like the Howlies.

Meticulous details and lifelike masks spit jarring voices out of nearly-familiar rubber faces and he’s sure they meant for it to be nice but what it is is sad and frightening and alienating.

Steve laughs as the almost-real faces spit comic book catchphrases and at one point in the evening Rumlow pulls Bucky’s face off his own and asks if he’s okay and Steve laughs as big and as real as he can and says he’ll get you next year, commander and Brock laughs too and maybe it’ll be okay, somehow, if he can pretend to the rest of them that this doesn’t still hurt. 

***

Memo: RE: Handling protocols for dual-asset missions   
11/28/2013

Assets Morpheus and Winter were unsuccessfully deployed on a joint mission to recover potentially useful technologies from Pym Industries. 

Due to Asset M.’s propensity to wear through gear there were no cowls readily available and both assets were deployed in goggles and muzzles. 

Before infiltration Asset W. failed catastrophically, violently removing Asset M.’s face coverings, physically absconding with Asset M. after subduing it in-field, and requiring sedation for recapture as  _ trigger words did not work to gain control of the asset _ . 

It is a crucial, priority-1A safety measure that all future dual-asset missions WILL NOT PROCEED unless Asset M. is wearing a reinforced, full-head covering that obscures eyes, mouth, and hair, and it must be understood that Asset M. is under no circumstances allowed to vocalize in the presence of Asset W. 

See attached diagrams of mission-appropriate outfitting for Asset M. and speak to the quartermaster before proceeding on any dual-asset mission.

Any handlers who are found to have deployed Assets M. and W. without appropriate headgear for Asset M. will be terminated immediately.

***

_ January 2014 _

After Tony had pulled him out of the wreckage of a disintegrating jet piloted by the half-sibling or half-son or half-something of a maybe-god, it would be somewhat uncharitable to remind him that if he’d waited literally thirty seconds before yanking Steve into a quinjet and taking off from Stark Tower that someone else might know where in the utter fuck they were and might be able to arrange for some variety or other of transport that did not involve hiking across approximately four thousand miles of snow, ice, and glaciers without even having any cute pictures of penguins to show for it. 

Because that’s where they were. Hiking through thigh-high snow after jetting off in the only jet in New York that was so stealth it couldn’t even send out radio frequencies because of its very impressive and stealthy paint while Tony had hopped into the first suit that opened for him, which happened to be a prototype model that had had the connection to Jarvis fail before they’d left the City’s airspace. 

And Steve wasn’t sure if it was close proximity to an Iron Man suit that was spooking him (because he still couldn’t quite convince himself that it wasn’t about to start choking or pummeling him), or if it was the ridiculous cold of northern Canada, or if he was just hungry after expending a few thousand calories preventing a werewolf from absconding with detailed information about the capabilities of the tesseract, but one way or another Steve was just a  _ tiny  _ bit on edge. 

“I don’t see what’s got you so grumpy, grandpa. This should be old hat to you; we’re basically on a soothing vacation among your fellow ice cubes. So stop scowling before your face sticks like that and help me get the transponder out from underneath the bulkhead.”

“Bulkhead” was a generous term for the collection of shrapnel that Tony was further disassembling and that they’d walked an hour to reach because Stark’s brilliant new prototype suit wasn’t thermally shielded enough to fly below freezing even though it was thermally shielded enough to stay nice and toasty inside while Steve froze his balls off while wearing what was essentially an extra-large, extra-thick, kevlar reinforced condom. 

“Remind me why firing rockets at our only ride out of here seemed like a good idea,” Steve grumbled, as he punched through the remnants of the console with a numb fist and ripped them open wide enough for Tony to start poking around with a flashlight.

He was so fucking cold. 

“Because,  _ Steven _ , if we’d let Fenrir Greyback waggle his little tail back over the Bifrost with all of the data he stole then Loki would be on the same planet with the Tesseract and all of the data that Jane and Erik were able to gather on its impact on Earth and those are things that I don’t happen to believe should be on the same planet as Loki.”

Steve grunted and pushed Tony back from the hole he was kneeling in so that Steve could get a grip on the top edge of it. He ripped the top of the console off completely and Tony crowed triumphantly, grabbing ahold of a silver and orange box with a brightly blinking light on top of it. 

“C’mon Capsicle, let’s get this thing outside so I can get a signal out.

Steve almost wanted to argue just for the sake of it.

His hands were bleeding. He didn’t know when they’d started.

“In normal circumstances these things only send out a periodic beep because it’s a power-saving thing, you know? This isn’t supposed to be a radio, it’s supposed to be how you find the plane that everyone died in so that you can ask it how they died. But you are with me, and when I’m around circumstances are never normal.”

Tony was sitting in the snow, happily chattering away behind his facemask. The suit couldn’t fly but it could, apparently, extrude phillips-head screwdrivers and a soldering iron. 

The sun on the sky and the snow looked the same.

“- so all I’ve gotta do is tweak the band a tiny, tiny bit which is easy enough with just modifying the antenna, and then we’ve got to boost the power kind of a lot but that’s why we’ve got me, right? And then it should -”

The sky went on forever, like an ocean, like dying.

“And hopefully within a couple of hours - Steve -”

Like pain.

There were rocks and suffering beneath his knees.

“Please,” he whispered.

“Steve, buddy, hey, can you stand up I don’t think getting that up close and personal with the ice is a great idea -”

“I’m sorry, please,” he moaned, eyes full of light and water.

“Okay I’m beginning to see why this plan has some flaws but, okay, let’s get - Jesus, they didn’t insulate this suit at all, Christ, okay Steve, I need you to listen to me -”

“I’m sorry, I can be good, please,” the silver man in front of him shone like all the suns and ice and he didn’t know who else to beg for a release from the endless pain that crept up his spine and into his scalp and buried its talons in his skull. 

“Buddy, I’m going to see if we can get a warm air buffer between your skin and the suit just hang on -”

He couldn’t see how to open the metal casing but he knew how to beg, and tipped his head to the side when cold steel fingers reached for his throat. He let himself lean forward and nuzzle into the bitingly cold metal between the silver man’s legs before he whined up to him in longing.

“Please, I can be good, I promise, I can be good for you but make it stop.”

“What the fu-”

And then the world ended -

Or at least the sky went dark and stopped being forever.

And there were dark shapes in the snow wrapping him in burning and he screamed until a needle slammed into his throat and it got so dark that he forgot to be cold.

***

Tony had seen a lot of weird, fucked-up shit in his life but whatever had been going on as Steve’s silent, stoic submission to hypothermia melted away into desperate begging was some exceptionally weird, fucked up shit. 

Brock Rumlow, world renowned asshole, was yelling something or another into Tony’s ear but he wasn’t paying much attention to it. He was watching Steve.

Steve pliant and unresponsive as Jack Rollins, reigning regional asshole champion 1996-1998, fretted over him and piled another dozen or so heated blankets around him. 

Steve didn’t like the cold. Tony  _ got  _ that now in a way he hadn’t two hours ago but not liking the cold wasn’t this. It wasn’t opening his mouth and pleading with his eyes from his knees. 

It wasn’t disturbing.

“What happened to him,” Tony blurted, cutting off Rumlow mid-tirade.

“That is none of your goddamned business, and if you hadn’t dragged him out here with no way to phone home -”

“We had the transponder! And the comms should have worked! It got you here, didn’t it?”

Rumlow shoved at the shoulder of the suit and seemed to only get madder when he couldn’t move it.

“There are trackers in his suit, you insufferable prick! There was a manhunt an hour after you took off! And as soon as he got out from under the shielding we had a bead on him and came to save your sorry ass and then you marched him across the goddamned tundra with no cold weather gear whatsoever and put him back inside and killed our fucking signal!”

“But what the fuck happened to him - he didn’t - he didn’t  _ say  _ anything and then all of a sudden it wal like he was  _ gone  _ what the  _ fuck _ ?”

Rumlow looked around the transport bay of the quinjet and must have found too many open eyes and listening ears for his liking so he glared and jerked his head toward the cockpit. Tony followed him uneasily.

“Does this thing have autopilot,” he barked at the brick-faced Shield agent flying the plane.

“Yessir.”

“Then get the fuck out and come back if it looks like we’re gonna crash.”

“Yessir.”

The goon clambered out and shut the bulkhead door behind him.

“Anybody ever tell you you’ve got a real way with people?”

“Fuck you, Stark. You’re the one trying to butter me up for answers, remember?”

Tony rolled his eyes and gestured expansively.

“So start talking, Butterface. What the  _ fuck _ ?”

Rumlow glowered. It was a pretty good glower but that didn’t mean much when you were wearing something that could (in ideal conditions and apparently above freezing) outstrip an F-35 and hit harder than a Sherman tank.

“You don’t think much of other people, do you?”

“Most other people don’t merit much thought,” he snorted.

“Yeah. That sounds about right. Sounds like why you didn’t bother reading up on your buddy even though you tried to buy his affections with a muscle car. People are just toys to you, same as your suits.”

Okay there was something  _ maybe  _ a little tiny bit fair about that.

“I read plenty about Steve and talked to him too and none of that explains why he short-circuited out there; he was gone. The lights were on, only creepy begging ghosts were home.” 

“You read about how he got captured by Schmidt’s people once. And held in a castle. In the alps. In December. Did you read about that?”

“No…”

“Yeah. Seems like the kind of thing someone would try to scrub from history, maybe someone with an agenda of keeping up morale and selling shiny toys.”

Tony glared.

“They kept him chained up in a courtyard for three weeks. If he asked nice enough they’d let him come back in out of the snow for a few hours.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tony had definitely not heard that story.

“Steve doesn’t like the cold and he doesn’t like talking about it but I’m surprised you let it get so far that he started having flashbacks. But then again maybe I shouldn’t be. Maybe you reminded him of them.”

And then Rumlow was storming away to be a seeping anal fissure somewhere else and Tony sat in the captain’s chair and stared into space until all he could see was the way water had gathered in Steve’s eyes when he said please.

***

Memo: Public and Private handling protocols for Asset Morpheus a note on operating range   
1/16/2014

Asset M. boasts a higher tolerance for extremes in heat, dehydration, exhaustion, and starvation than an unenhanced human but strict adherence to minimum operating temperatures must be observed. 

Asset M. is never to be deployed at temperatures below two degrees celsius and never to be exposed to temperatures below four degrees celsius for more than one hour.

Modifications are being made to all tactical suits in use for Asset M. within both SHIELD and HYDRA to include emergency heat sources with functionality for up to twelve hours to prevent accidental Asset regression in front of inappropriate audiences.

See quartermaster for access and return all non-approved suits from various lockers, conveyances, and personal quarters.

***

_ March 2014 _

It’s not that Steve didn’t appreciate the effort last year, it’s just that some things it’s better to face than forget.

He rides north at midnight on the ninth when Jack and Brock are softly asleep. 

It takes four hours and it’s cold out but he gets there. 

The tenement where he shared a matchbox walk-up with Bucky is long gone, but Mr. Barnes’ mother’s brownstone is still there, still a bit worn down at the corners but too big and grand to be real.

Steve had never been inside but he’d waited for Bucky to finish interminable dinners with the family matriarch a couple times a month, kicking his heels on the curb and wondering if the gas lights inside were as warm as they looked. 

He stood across the street and for the first time wondered if maybe Bucky’s sisters or cousins or nieces or nephews still lived there. 

He didn’t want to know.

He didn’t want to stay. 

This was never their place.

So he rode out to Coney Island and left his bike behind and sat on the boardwalk and let the cold salt spray of the day wash away everything that needed to be cleaned.

***

_ April 2014 _

Steve liked getting up earlier than the rest of the house. He found out when he rode up to New York and he kept it up when he got back. He started waking up and making coffee. He started running.

One day he even made a friend.


	8. Everything Must Die

Tony kicked at the corner of his desk and set his chair spinning. 

The momentum bled off until he was staring at the still ceiling of his office.

He kicked the floor and spun the other way.

He slowed to a stop again.

Maybe he’d design some frictionless bearings. Maybe if he could keep spinning forever he could forget the expression on Steve’s face that had been haunting him for a month.

He kicked his desk.

“Jay,” he called when he’d slowed down again, “can you bring up a record of any time any reports describe Captain Rogers being taken captive anywhere in the Alps?”

There was a slight pause.

“Nothing I’m able to access describes Captain Rogers being taken captive in the Alps or anywhere else.”

Tony kicked the floor.

“Can you set up a timeline of known operations Rogers was on in the war, including duration and downtime between missions? And highlight any time that there’s a gap of at least a week that’s unaccounted for.”

A glowing blue display hovered over Tony’s desk so he put his feet down and stopped the chair.

“One two-week gap in ‘44. In August.”

“Yes sir. Other than that there’s no gap of greater than three days between documented missions, actions, or press conferences.”

“Is there any speculation about what happened during those two weeks.”

Jarvis made an artificial humming sound.

“Sir, if I may, I’ve just cross-referenced those dates with the records for the rest of the unit he and the Howling Commandos were attached to at that point. There are two photos showing Timothy Dugan and Captain Rogers with another man from the unit dated to the unaccounted-for time. It appears that the unit was attached to Operation Dragoon and the activities of Captain Rogers may have been concealed to obscure the role the Howling Commandos played in the liberation of Nice.”

Tony kicked the ground.

“So no gaps. No time that Rogers could have been taken captive and tortured for three weeks.”

“No, sir. Not that I’m able to find.”

Tony kicked his desk.

***

Clint was tearing his way through a box of pizza while Natasha watched Tony fiddle with the deployment springs of her widow’s bites.

Tony abruptly dropped his tools and tossed aside his magnifying goggles.

“What do you know about Brock Rumlow?”

Natasha raised an eyebrow at him.

Tony rolled his eyes.

“What do you know about Brock Rumlow that I haven’t already had Jarvis dig out from his service, arrest, and school records?”

“He’s an asshole,” Clint said from around a mouthful of pepperoni.

Tony rolled his eyes again.   
“And that I don’t know from having spent several hours in at least two jets sharing his charming company.”

Natasha chewed her lip. Tony knew it wasn’t really indecisiveness, she already knew whether or not she planned to tell him anything, she just wanted to see how he’d react. Knowing that’s what she was doing didn’t actually make it easy not to react. 

“Quid pro quo, Clarice. You tell me what I already know you know you’re gonna tell me and I’ll tell you why I’m asking.”

“You first.”

“Bullshit. You first so you can’t decide what you’re going to edit out.”

Natasha shrugged.

“His field rank is commander but he doesn’t do most of his work in the field. His STRIKE team doesn’t take that many missions, especially not now that Rogers is teamed up with them.”

“Okay so what does he do?”

The nice thing about being on the receiving end of Natasha’s death-glares was that you built up a tolerance. They hardly even bothered Tony anymore.

“Mostly interrogations. Mostly a lot of interrogations. And some extremely classified training work. I haven’t seen much of that side of his skills but what I have seen reminds me of home.”

“Oh, that’s not good,” Clint interjected.

“Nope,” Tony agreed, then waved irritably at Natasha. “C’mon, you’re holding out on me. What else have you got?”

She stared flatly at him for long enough that he was pretty sure she was done, when she surprised him by speaking again.

“Killian’s projects. You know what he was doing.”

Tony snorted. 

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“There’s a rumor - just a rumor - that Rumlow touched on something similar. There’s not much to support it - a couple of ops where things happened that don’t quite make sense - but it’s possible that he’s enhanced. Nothing like Steve or Bruce. But. Maybe something.”

“That is. That is very not good,” Clint said.

Tony was inclined to agree.

Natasha grabbed a slice of pizza.

“Your turn, Dr. Lecter.”

Tony grinned at her and drummed his fingers on the worktable in front of him.

“I think there’s something wrong with Steve,” he picked up a screwdriver and started tapping it on the metal surface. “I took off with him on that thing in January and it’s been driving me crazy ever since.”

“So why wait until almost March to say something?”

“Because - okay, here’s what happened: me and Steve got caught out in the ice, right? And I knew logically he probably had issues with the cold, blah blah blah, frozen for seventy years, blah blah blah, you’re so insensitive, Tony, I get it, okay?” The frequency of the taps from his screwdriver increased. “But this wasn’t just not liking the cold - he - okay, he got cold and then he got really, really weird. Fell to his knees, started begging, started telling me he could be good.”

He looked over to Clint and Natasha and found them looking back at him with frank disbelief and a careful non-expression respectively. 

“So, I know Steve lives with Rumlow, okay, and I don’t like the guy but Steve’s okay so maybe he’s not a total asshole? So I ask Rumlow what the actual fuck is happening and he feeds me this line about Rogers getting held hostage in the war, getting tortured by being locked outside in the cold for weeks at a time. Says the cold gave Steve flashbacks. And at first I took mister enhanced interrogation at his word.”

Natasha frowned.

“I’ve never heard anything about Steve getting captured during the war.” 

Tony pointed the screwdriver at her. 

“Bingo, that’s what I said, so Rumlow implied that it got covered up by the government and maybe my dad to help with morale.”   
Clint wobbled a hand in the air.

“Eh, I guess that’s possible, but -”

“But really fucking hard because there’s so much info and film footage and documentation about Rogers’ time in the war, right?”

Clint nodded.

“So a couple weeks ago I had Jay look it up and there’s nothing, no multi-week timespan where he wasn’t accounted for.”

Clint shoved another half a piece of pizza in his mouth and started talking before he’d even started chewing it. 

“So Rumlow, who’s a dude who does interrogation and probably torture and maybe brainwashing and is maybe secretly a little bit super, is super protective of Steve and acts like a territorial cat any time I try to hang out with him or you try to get lunch with him,” he gestured to Natasha then Tony, “or you end up on a mission with him, and also lives with Steve and now Steve is acting a little brainwashed and tortured and the reason Rumlow supplied for this turns out to be bullshit.”

Tony nodded.

“Okay, I hate everything about that, what’s the plan,” Clint said, and shoved the rest of his slice in his mouth.

***

Theoretically Natasha liked Steve Rogers.

This was theoretical largely because she hadn’t actually spent very much time around him and partially because she wasn’t sure what liking other human beings entailed.

She supposed she liked Clint well enough; he had defined goals that didn’t involve subjugating any moiety of the human species and shared her appreciation for ranged weapons. 

She found Tony perplexing and irritating but useful and occasionally entertaining.

She empathized with Bruce and his struggles to reconcile himself to the violent thing inside of him. 

She found Steve a bit boring, if she was being honest. 

He was inoffensive in their conversations, he was very strong but didn’t show off his strength. He was good to have at your back on a mission but there wasn’t much she really felt like she could say to him. 

So in theory she liked him because they had worked together successfully in the past and she understood that his story was evocative of sympathy in most people and that his isolation made him endearing. 

She just didn’t feel those things.

But she did know that brainwashing and programming was wrong at every level and nobody deserved to have that happen to them; she did realize that targeting an isolated individual to be on the receiving end of such treatment was unusually cruel and effective. 

So it was that, more than anything, that drove her to dive into learning all that she could about Brock Rumlow and his specialized training and his lifestyle and history and future and goals.

And the deeper she dug the less she liked what she saw. 

She’d known that Steve lived with Rumlow and Rollins, she hadn’t known that they were sleeping with him. She’d known that there were some questionable skeletons in Brock’s military closet, she hadn’t known that he’d been court martialled for activities in Afghanistan that had ended with a teenage boy literally eviscerated. Once she’d found that record she’d found that the verdict had been sealed and that Rumlow had started working with SHIELD the same month. 

Natasha didn’t invite Steve to lunch, but only because Steve didn’t seem like the kind of person who really cared if he was invited to lunch.

Instead Natasha invited him to spar. Really spar.

She wasn’t surprised that he showed up. She was a little surprised that he showed up alone. He looked peevish and stubborn. She decided they were probably being recorded and adjusted her plans accordingly.

“I’m sorry we didn’t reach out to you after New York. I’m sorry I didn’t reach out to you. Your team is right,” Natasha was dancing on her toes on the springy surface of the practice ring. Steve was climbing through the ropes and looking at her suspiciously. Natasha knew deprogramming. She knew you didn’t make it any easier by setting yourself up as adversarial to the people your target trusted and cared for. 

Steve dropped his training bag on the vinyl and nodded noncommittally. “Didn’t take you for a boxer,” he said, pulling out a set of modern wraps in bright colors. He looked modern all over. Short hair, almost a buzz cut. Tight black workout shirt. Athletic leggings. He didn’t look lost and confused at all. 

“I don’t box, but you can if you want to. I just figured we’d start here to get a feel for each other before the warmup’s over.”

Steve smiled a little. “You gonna actually work me hard for once?”

Natasha snorted and sneered a little. “I guess I’d better, if you’re getting slow enough for one of Tony’s suits to get the drop on you.”

Steve laughed so hard she didn’t even see the hit coming until she’d already been shoved against the ropes. 

“First one’s free,” Steve said with a grin, and opened his guard.

***

Steve’s eyebrow was healing shut and Natasha was waiting for feeling to come back into her fingers when she tossed a water bottle at him and sat down beside him on the mat. 

“So I’ve worked with Rollins before. He’s good in the field, keeps on target, but I don’t know the others. They watching your six?”

Steve cracked the bottle open and drank off half of it. “Better than some,” he said.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, I’m a terrible friend, and I should have known you wanted to be friends. Let’s chalk it up to my tragic childhood of deprivation and start over. Hi Steve, I’m Natasha - please reassure me you’re getting along with your team and aren’t going to get killed in the field so I can invest emotional bandwidth into getting to know you better.”

***

She didn’t interrogate him. Didn’t even try. She was sure that Rumlow was watching for that and teaching Steve how to guard against it.

She just let herself get to know him and let him kick her ass a couple times a week, once in a while getting in a hit of her own.

It was good for her. She got stronger sparring with him, had to be faster. It was like training had been when she was little and always weaker than the ones hitting her. 

She actually liked Steve, not just the theory. He wasn’t boring, he was sad and funny and wanted to be loved in a way that was heartbreaking.

Natasha let herself pretend she was a normal woman, and let herself be friends with Steve, even occasionally joining him and his odd collection of partners in getting a drink on weekends. 

It took two months before he ate half of one of his protein bars and left it unfinished in the wrapper beside his towel on the mat. 

Natasha pocketed it as she picked up the debris around the training room, and tossed the towel in a hamper.

***

Everyone thought of Clint Barton as a slob and a sniper, nobody thought of him as a spy.

Which was actually really handy, for a spy.

Clint didn’t even bother to try to be all cloak-and-dagger with it; it wouldn’t have worked, wasn’t his style. Besides, if you put in an earpiece and a ballcap to look over someone’s shoulder you had to sacrifice at least one hearing aid and it just wasn’t worth it for what you’d get out of tailing someone for weeks.

So Clint sat on his couch and went for runs with his dog and shoved pizza in his mouth while he looked at his extremely normal-seeming cellphone with its cracked screen and scuffed case.

The nice thing about hanging out with Tony was that if you wanted tech that was extremely abnormal he could give it to you.

Clint spent three weeks tapping between Candy Crush and a massive collection of SHIELD OSINT data he’d surreptitiously downloaded one day, and tried to figure out what the hell was going on with Steve. 

There was something funny going on with his schedule. Steve’s planned SHIELD missions were exhaustively documented and had lots of info about what injuries he’d sustained and why he’d gone to the infirmary and when debrief had been.

There was a lot more time in the infirmary than really matched up with visits justified by his missions.

That seemed a bit odd so Clint decided to widen the net and update his credentials to have access to police CCTV cameras around DC.

Huh. 

Brock and Jack and Steve sure left their house a lot in the middle of the night right before Steve had an emergency visit to the infirmary a lot. 

Clint checked other records. 

The cafeteria noted when Steve came in and what he ate so that they could attempt to ensure his health in a noninvasive (but extremely invasive and creepy, in Clint’s opinion) way.

The cafeteria noted that Steve rarely ate much because he supplemented his diet with the SHIELD nutrition bars that were provided for him.

Clint doubled back to the medical records. Then shipping/receiving. Then purchasing. Then the cafeteria again.

Clint had seen Steve eat those. They were nothing like the standard SHIELD ration bars, which were usually less like candy bars and more like compressed bricks of wheat paste. 

He couldn’t find any evidence of SHIELD ordering, delivering, stocking, or requesting Supersoldier kibble. 

Clint decided that digging on Steve was going to be a hole that didn’t have a bottom - he’d already generated a hundred new questions that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He wanted some answers.

So he started digging on Mercer.

***

Tony was well aware that subtle was not his forte. That was fine. He’d always been more successful with ‘flashy’ and ‘throw money at it’ as solutions to his problems.

A reasonable person might have reached out to Steve, or started doing research.

Tony broke into Fury’s office.

“I assume you have an extremely good excuse for being here,” the Director’s voice rolled through the dark room.

“That depends,” Tony said breezily, “do you have an extremely good excuse for using my patented, copyrighted, non-licensable, very obviously stolen designs on blueprints of what are inarguably gunships? You know how I feel about gunships, Nick.”

“Industrial espionage is a serious problem these days,” Fury said, infuriatingly unflapped as he sat down in the visitor’s chair of his own office. “Sounds like you should probably tighten up your security.” 

Tony considered playing the game a little longer, and decided he didn’t have the attention span for it. 

“Cut the shit, Nick. The World Security Council is building WMDs with my designs. You owe me answers for that.”

Fury crossed his legs and glared. “I can’t decide if I admire your guts or I’m astounded by your entitlement. The World Security Council is not part of Stark Industries, last I checked, and it is therefore none of your goddamned business.”

Tony actually felt his jaw drop. 

“The last time _ I _ checked the World Security Council was the organizing body that decided to launch a  _ nuclear bomb at New York _ , so last I checked their business is  _ everybody’s  _ business.”

“And you may remember, from that incident, that you nearly died trying to effect a solution to that particular problem. This is an attempt to circumvent that problem.”

“How? These designs wouldn’t stop a single one of the transports we saw in the Battle of New York and they’re paired up with flight paths that take them over civilian populations almost constantly,” Tony shuffled the papers on the desk. “These are predator drones on an unprecedented scale and you’ve got paths mapped over Chicago and London and Algiers. Explain what problems this solves, explain how it solves them, because to me it just looks like you’re planning on making every kid in the midwest just as scared of shadows in the sky as kids in Syria are.”

Fury drummed his fingers on his knee. 

“Those kids in Syria aren’t having their homes invaded by opposition forces and watching their little sisters get sold off for the night anymore.”

“Jesus, Nick, and kids in Capetown don’t have that kind of trauma either, why don’t we inflict a totally different kind of fear and horror on everyone in the world.”

Nick shook his head and smiled grimly. “They never even have to know about the carriers. They’ve got your turbines but SHIELD cloaking.”

Tony thought that maybe he was having a heart attack. He’d had a heart attack before, right? Had it felt like this? He thought maybe it had. 

“Nick. This can’t happen. You know I can’t let this happen.”

Fury shook his head. 

“You’re going to have to, Tony. Do you know why?”   
Tony couldn’t move. He was fairly certain he was dying.

“Because you believe in protecting the world, and this is the best way to protect the world from itself.”

***

Natasha and Clint found Tony in a frenzy in the workshop of his tower.

“Spy Kids,” he shouted, when Jarvis announced their presence. “Tell me you’ve got something good because I do not and I’d like to be dragged back from the brink of suicide if at all possible.” He had eight glowing screens hovering in front of him and was typing fast enough that his fingers blurred in the low light.

“When’s the last time you slept, Tony?” Clint asked, setting down a coffee mug approximately the size of his head.

“Two days ago, which doesn’t matter much if we die in the next ten hours. Why, what’s up, buttercup?”

Clint scrubbed his face with his hands and rubbed at his eyes. 

“The agent they put on babysitting Steve is weird. Really weird. Really ‘I’ve got a degree biochemistry and wrote a thesis on cryogenics and was mysteriously missing for a full month before Rogers was defrosted then suddenly appeared in SHIELD’s NY office on a totally different assignment than my last stint in the field’ weird.”

Tony waved most of his screens away and spun in his office chair.

“That is weird, that is exactly the kind of weird that pushes me closer to the edge instead of dragging me back to the loving embrace of my dear friends. What have you got for me, Miss Rushman?”

Natasha picked up Clint’s coffee and stared out over the city.

“Hide all the sharp objects in the room because the meal bars Steve eats have enough drugs in them to take down a tiger and he tears through them like Clint eats pizza.”

Clint waved his hand. “Those are also weird, but they’re ‘nobody knows where he’s getting them and they’re not in any of the SHIELD purchase or nutrition records’ weird.”

Natasha took a sip of Clint’s coffee then put the mug down with a grimace.

“How about you, what do you have to share with the class?”

Tony gestured and a large screen showing complicated blueprints appeared over his shoulder.

“Director Fury has strongly implied that SHIELD is shortly going to put invisible, aircraft-carrier-sized WMDs in the air over various cities worldwide and I’m having trouble figuring out how to stop it.”

Clint grabbed his mug and shoved it at Tony.

“Put some alcohol in this, there’s no way being drunk could make this any worse.”

***

Princess was on his knees in front of his handler. The other asset was on his knees beside him. Princess didn’t precisely relax, but he knew he didn’t have to be good when the other asset was out of storage. He wasn’t allowed to show his face or use his mouth or strip off the cold suit. He still needed to behave, but he didn’t need to be good. 

The handler was petting the other asset’s long brown hair and running his hands over his high cheekbones. It looked warm. Comforting.

Princess wasn’t jealous. Princess didn’t feel anything but cold and warm and fear. But the warmth looked nice. Princess wanted warm things for the other asset like he wanted warm things for himself. 

The handler was talking to nothing.

“They asked for a check-in with Cap out of the blue. With the helicarriers going up this week that stinks to me. So either they know what’s going on and we ambush them with both assets and maybe get the drop on them, or they don’t know what’s going on and we take ’em out now instead of next week.”

Princess was looking at the other asset. His hair was pretty and his shoulders were broad. Princess couldn’t tell if he wanted the other asset to take all his handlers’ attention or if it would be better to save the other weapon the trouble, spare him by making the handler forget anyone else was there.

The handler’s hand dropped to the pretty, soft brown hair and Princess decided he didn’t like it. He didn’t want his handler touching the other asset. He laid his head down on his handler’s thigh and whined. He got a jolt of cold for his trouble.

“Stop being a menace,” the handler said. “Just be still until we tell you who to kill.”

Princess relaxed his tense muscles. He was good at killing things. He’d kill what they told him to and they’d let him stay warm.

“It’s too late to send Cap in now,” the handler said to nothing again. “He’s already down. This is it. No more hiding.”

Nothing spoke back and the handler listened. He petted Princess’s head through his mask as he answered.

“We don’t have to keep him secret anymore. There’s no point to the triggering or the freezing after this. We’re gonna make him perfect. Get the chair ready, Cyn. I wanna empty him out myself.” 

The petting was nice, so kind and gentle he wanted to weep with it. He stayed on his knees. He tried not to be a menace. He fell in love with the hand on his skull and the presence at his side and every bit of metal floor or kevlar clothing that kept the cold at bay.

Princess couldn’t remember ever being happier.

***

“To have home field advantage it works better if we’re, you know, at home,” Tony grumbled as he tripped over a power strip hidden under the edge of the conference room table. “I just want to state, for the record, that this is a terrible plan and it would be a much better plan if we were doing it in the tower, where my robot AI manservant can lock all of the doors and put up blast shielding.”

“The only plan right now is to see Steve,” Natasha said for the fifth time. “We’re trying specifically not to make anyone think we’re looking for an advantage. I just want to see Steve in person and get a read on him.”

Tony snorted. “Yeah, and maybe knock him out and lock him up until we understand what the fuck is going on.”

Natasha shrugged, which was as good as a signed affidavit from her.

“What if he shows up with his little goon squad?”

She sighed. The way Tony was counting that was the third time he’d asked that question.

“He probably will show up with Rumlow and Rollins. They live together and work together and Rumlow is his commanding officer and he doesn’t have a car.”

Clint was frowning at the wall of windows on the east side of the room, giving him a view over the Potomac. 

“Tony’s right. This stinks. Did you request this conference room?”

Natasha shook her head. “Steve picked it.”

“Did Steve tell you to meet him in a conference room ten floors up or did you get a text with a room number?”

Suddenly Natasha was looking out the windows as well.

“There’s only one door in here,” she said, slowly.

She wasn’t wearing her fight suit. It hadn’t seemed necessary. She only had the 1911 at the small of her back and the knives she could fit under her jacket. Skinny jeans ruined so many carry possibilities.

“So from the looks you two are giving one another and the sudden absolutely  _ oppressive  _ silence I’m going to go ahead and guess that we’re fucked. Are we fucked? We’re fucked,” Tony stood up and reached for the briefcase that held his suit.

The door shattered.

Clint’s bow sprang up like magic and before Natasha’s brain had fully processed what she was seeing Clint was already firing two exploding arrows at the huge, armored forms that had ripped into the room like cannonballs and were doing their best to pulverize everything within arm’s reach. 

Natasha let her training take over and was vaulting off the conference table to aim a kick at the long-haired form only to be swatted out of the air by the helmeted assailant. 

She rolled and let the momentum carry her to her back so that she could throw herself feet-first at the creepy mask of the hulking body that was bearing down on her with superhuman speed.

“I fucking hate,” Tony was shouting over the sound of breaking glass and the pneumatic hiss of his suit unfurling, “being right!”

Clint got thrown into the wall but his arrows had done some good - the long-haired attacker was tearing away part of his charred suit and revealing a metal arm that hung limp from his shoulder. 

Natasha decided that she could shit herself later. She had bigger problems than the Winter Soldier, which was a terrifying thought.

The helmeted attacker had shrugged off her kick to the face with a roll of his shoulders and was trying to get a good enough grip on her to grapple her to the ground in a way that was uncomfortably familiar. As a large hand wrapped around her ankle she realized why she knew it.

She’d wanted to see Steve. 

She was seeing Steve.

She tried to twist away as the reality of it pounded into her head - there was nobody else she knew with shoulders that broad and hips that narrow and a grip that unbreakable. She was getting taken down by Captain America and if he got her close enough to take a solid hit she would never be getting up.

“A little help, please,” she ground out as she unholstered the Colt at her back and took aim.

And didn’t fire. 

It was Steve, she was almost sure of it. Even the grip of the wide hand around her ankle was familiar in its heat and strength. She was seeing him even though she couldn’t see him, and with his head in her sights she couldn’t pull the trigger. 

She growled in frustration and kicked at his solar plexus as hard as she could while twisting her body so that she was hanging upside-down from his grasp. She put the barrel of the gun against his calf and fired right as Tony streaked across the room and tackled him.

The hand didn’t release her ankle and she got dragged along for a ride as her attacker -  _ Steve  _ \- bellowed in pain and aimed a punch at Tony. It rang against the helmet of the suit; Tony swore and aimed a punch back, and the mask Steve was wearing cracked, and fell away.

“What the fuck,” Tony said, “what the fuck, Steve what the -” Steve dropped Natasha’s leg to focus all his attention on Tony, snarling and bloody behind the remnants of his helmet while he launched himself at the iron suit.

Natasha didn’t waste time, just leapt on his back and tried to put Steve in a sleeper hold - he needed to get blood to his brain, supersoldier or not.

He roared and slammed his back against the wall and then Natasha was sliding down to the ground, finding herself beside Clint and at the feet of the Winter Soldier.

Who wasn’t moving.

Even though there were two stunned enemy combatants within easy reach the Soldier was standing stock-still and staring at Steve as he wrestled with Tony.

The creepy insectoid goggles tracked their movements and he followed them in a trance until Tony backhanded Steve and the soldier erupted into lopsided action, charging into the fight with his metal arm dangling uselessly.

Even with the arm out of commission there was no way that Tony was going to be able to stand up to two supersoldiers, and if the Winter Soldier was here his handlers weren’t far away.

Natasha dragged Clint to his feet and fired five deafening shots into the pane of glass closest to her, watching the window shatter and letting a gust of cold air into the room.

“Tony, get us out of here,” she shouted, and that was that. Almost before she’d finished speaking the suit had dived between her and Clint and was launching them out of that terrible, confusing room. 

She watched over the metal shoulder and saw black-suited bodies pouring into the room, one leveled a rifle with a long barrel at them and then the rifle was tumbling through the air and a bulky body with a shiny left arm was leaping out of the window, hair blowing in the wind and handlers shouting after it.

She took a deep breath, put her head against Tony’s cold shoulder, and tried to figure out what was going on.

***

Alexander stood beside his old friend and looked at the wreckage of the conference room. Nick sighed.

“How long has Stark known about the carriers?” He asked, taking off his glasses to rub at his eyes.

“He confronted me about it two days ago. He might have been aware of them for a little longer, but the man isn’t known for keeping secrets.” Nick kicked at a bit of glass and looked around the wreckage of the room.

Brock Rumlow stood beside the door, with a rapidly-swelling bruise rising on his face and splinters in his hair.

“I can’t believe they managed to get away with Rogers,” Fury sighed. “With all the stories I’ve heard about him I thought he’d be able to take on a few unenhanced humans.”

Rumlow shifted uneasily. “Sir,” he said, deferential and polite. “Agent Barton fired a couple real weird arrows at him. They might have been planning on containing him for a long time.”

“You see why we can’t delay the launch anymore, Nick. This certainly explains the irregularities you were finding. It seems like half of your own organization is against you; we’ve got to get the birds in the air.”

Fury stared down the length of the building and nodded. 

“You’re right. The launch is online tomorrow. Let Stark go to ground; there’s nowhere he’s going to be able to hide.”

***

As soon as they were a few floors down, Brock slammed the emergency stop button on the elevator and was grappling with Cynthia’s pants and tearing his own fly open. She laughed and shoved him back hard so she had time to turn around and bend over, lifting herself up on her tiptoes to let him get the right angle to slam into her.

“You excited, babydoll?” He growled, dipping his fingers between her legs and finding her wet and messy. “He ready for us?”

She nodded and bucked back against him rough enough to rock Brock back on his heels.

“He’s in the vault, they knocked down Morpheus and Steve should be waking up in about half an hour. You wanna fill me up now or you wanna save it for your little toy?”

“Fuck,” he ground out.

She laughed and rode back against him again. “Let me get mine, babe, then we’ll go get yours.”

Cynthia was an efficient professional in all things. She pushed Brock to his knees and got a fistful of his hair so that she could grind against his face while he was licking and sucking at her in a messy, sloppy rush. He was too worked up to do a good job so she clamped her thighs down on his ears and pulled his hair in the way that he knew meant she wanted his tongue thrusting as deep as he could get it, then fingered herself to orgasm while he struggled to breathe.

He pulled a packet of wet wipes out of his pocket and calmly cleaned his face while she released the emergency stop and put her clothes back in order. 

Jack got one whiff of the elevator when the doors opened on the ground floor and rolled his eyes at them.

“Any word on Winter?” Cynthia asked. Brock wasn’t sure how she did it. His mind was still four floors up and neck deep in her cunt but she was all business. He loved that about her. Ruthless.

Jack sighed and passed her a Starkpad. “We’ve been keeping him out of the freezer too long, he’s getting smart about this shit. The tracer worked for about twelve minutes and then the signal cut off. We had him on surveillance cams for about a minute before he stole a jacket from the locker rooms in the basement and as soon as he was out of the building again he just disappeared.”

Brock shrugged. It was Pierce’s call to send the assets in to fight Stark together, it was Pierce who assumed the risk that Winter would go haywire if he saw Morpheus’s face. It was against Brock’s specific, well documented protests. The older asset was a useful tool but it was in its sunset, the star of its worth fading as the new asset rose. 

It was just a matter of time before Winter was retired from the field. Losing a weapon would be a problem, losing a toy was only an irritation. They’d look for Winter but the stupid thing would probably starve in a week anyway - besides, he was going to be Pierce’s toy. If the Secretary wanted to devote resources to recovering his fleshlight he could damn well requisition them. Brock was busy. 

***

Sam Wilson was having a Normal Day.

Normal Days were Nice. 

They were Pleasant.

They were also relatively rare.

Sam spent a lot of time having flashbacks, and more time than that staring at walls and wishing away the world he’d found himself in. He could put on a good face for group, he could manage some phone calls with his sister.

It was harder if people got close. So he didn’t really let people get close.

But that was on Bad Days.

On Normal Days Sam felt almost like Sam again. He could do things he enjoyed, meet new people and be friendly. Hope for things. 

He could hope he’d outpace Jen from the Birding Society’s score in the next couple weeks. He could hope that he’d be better someday. He could hope that Steve Rogers, haunted and lonely and funny and fast, would come to his group because if there was anyone who’d ever projected stronger ‘please help me’ vibes Sam hadn’t met them.

On Normal Days Sam did Normal Things. He ate food and watched TV. He napped, sometimes.

He did not invite six-foot-tall cyborgs having panic attacks through his patio door on Normal Days because that sort of thing was very Abnormal.

This was no longer a Normal Day.

The cyborg in question was crouched against the glass and looked like he was about five years deep into losing his shit and that was before you counted the metal arm. He could have been coming down from something, in the middle of a psychotic episode. But the man was clearly having a much worse day than Sam and the least Sam could do was help. 

“Hey man,” Sam said in a clear voice that he hoped would carry through the glass. “What’s going on down there? You need some water? A blanket? Is there someone I can call for you?”

The cyborg stared blankly at Sam and Sam moved very carefully to crouch down beside him to talk to him through the door. The cyborg blinked and slapped his not-metal-don’t-think-about-it hand against the glass. 

There was a card in it. Sam’s card. With his personal number scrawled underneath the office line.

It was the card he’d given to Captain America and now it was in the hands of a panicked and also maybe clearly at least a little bit injured cyborg.

“Yeah, that’s me, bud. You a vet? Is that why you’re looking for me?”

“Steve, what the fuck,” the cyborg said in a tone so flat and dead that it made Sam shiver.

“Did something happen to Steve? Did he tell you to find me?”

“Tony, get us out of here,” they cyborg said.

“Buddy, you don’t look like you’re having a great time out there. Why don’t you come inside and we can get you cleaned up a little and we can talk.”

Normal Day Sam would probably have words with Sam about inviting terrifying cyborgs into his home at some Normal Date in the future, but for now all Sam saw was an injured man who very clearly needed his help.

The cyborg wobbled to his feet. He looked unsteady and there was something wrong with his robot arm, making it hang dead against his body and sway slightly with his motions.

Sam slid the glass door open and kept his movements slow and telegraphed while the cyborg limped inside.

“Hey man, it’ll be okay” he said, and guided him gently to one of the high chairs alongside the breakfast bar. He started filling a cup with water and watched the cyborg looking lost and confused and trying to absorb Sam’s kitchen like he’d found himself boots on the ground in Afghanistan between two blinks. 

“What’s your name?”

The cyborg stalled for a second, then snapped back to action with a nearly audible grinding of mental gears.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038.”


End file.
